January 2006 - Benjamin

01/01

The Superlative and the Supercilious gathered about the arena to watch the beasts trudge their dirt track.
"This isn't very interesting is it?" scoffed the Supercilious.
"The art is in the motion," the Superlative replied.
"But to what end? They just walk around and around. Look, they don't even step outside of their own footprints."
"Hush, they move within the circles of the universe itself."
"You're looking for excuses that this is art," he snorted. "It's utterly heartbreaking is what this is."
"Yes," the Superlative conceded, looking into their eyes watching only their own feet. "They are very heartbreaking creatures."

01/02

And whilst we're on the subject, what are you doing, eh? Your circles may be more erratic, more occult, but they are still circles nonetheless. They are still routines you hide from yourself and anyone else. You are still just deferring responsibility for your own actions and destiny, like the colourless apes who exasperate you so by their plodding.

And there's no mystical design,
No cosmic lover preassigned.
There's nothing you can find
that can not be found.
'Cause with all the changes
you've been through
It seems the stranger's always you.
Alone again in some new
Wicked little town.

01/03

Dreams are odd things aren't they? Last night I dreamt I was in a restaurant with George Best. He was very charming, though kept turning into Darth Vader. After a brief interlude where I myself turned into Patrick Troughton, I returned to the restaurant to find George had autographed a biscuit for me to give to Little One. My sister took offence to this, and thumped it, claiming it was morbid. Defensively, I hurled the autographed biscuit across the floor, whereupon it promptly hit a table leg and crumbled. My sister laughed. George turned into Darth Vader again and left.

01/04

How selfish. Yesterday yet another pair of friends married, conspiring to make me conspicuous. As a tacit act of apology for this selfish behaviour, tea was enjoyed afterwards at The Ritz. Frankly, I never want to see a sandwich again. Later, at Rules, further delightfully decadent indulgences were devoured, and between being quite unable to refrain from groaning in pleasure with each bite of my venison, Jonio taught me the art of wine tasting. A fun evening out for all, but something tells me the happy couple enjoyed it the most. Here's hoping one of the grooms doesn't get pregnant.

01/05

Everyday, more and more, I sit in the office and stare out of the window, thinking about being somewhere else. Sometimes it's somewhere quite specific, other times simply anywhere where there's an adventure to be found will do. It's not as if I seem any closer to getting anywhere near these places however. Tonight Panda and Lemon came to borrow water. It was nice having company that actually acknowledged my existence at least, but I'm beginning to think I'll never get this novel finished. Why am I so easily distracted? Why am I so lazy? Why do I keep trying?

01/06

I think it was a first when one camp cop announced his civil partnership to the other. I'd never realised as a kid how much of a social and political commentary pantomimes were. It's amazing you don't see Angus Deayton or Jeremy Paxman in any. Christ, there's a thought, Jeremy Paxman in tights. They're very human things aren't they - pantomimes and politics. All those caricatures, the smut, transvestism and literal "song and dance"made from, when you think about it, quite inconsequential matters. That said, I can't remember seeing one recently where a single member of the cast liked girls.

01/07

Tom cruise doesn't suck all the time. I liked him in Interview With The Vampire. Particularly the line "Claudia, you have been a very, very naughty little girl," whilst playing the harpsichord with quite corpse-like fingers. I wonder what it would be like to live forever. To spend an eternity in the darkness and the twilight, with each and every moon reminding you of how the world used to be before everything became vulgar and crass. This is what I thought as I savoured each quip with a sip from a glass of Rioja, nibbling on a Caesar chicken pizza.

01/08

Peel, boil and drain potatoes, then mash with generous amount of butter, some rosemary and carpet-bomb with black pepper. Coat pork medallions in cinnamon, thyme and sage and sear in olive oil and butter. Place aside. Without changing the skillet's oil, fry onions and apple slices with basil leaves. Pour in half cup of last night's Rioja. Add medallions. Leave to steam then serve. Take one mouthful and realise you've cooked the pork for too long, and didn't evapourate enough of the wine. Consider self a failure and eat rest of meal for nutrition's sake alone, without savour or ceremony.

01/09

I was eating lunch at work when it happened. Three masked men burst in, heading straight towards me. Instantly I froze with fear. One knocked me hard across the temple. As I fell, somehow in slow motion, I noticed two things. One was the blood, spilling out beneath me like a red ocean. Two, no one else saw or cared. I hit the floor, breaking every bone in my body. The man removed his mask. It was me, but older. "This is for killing me before I was born," he snarled, and slowly pushed his knife deep into my skull.

01/10

Flesh is sex. Sex is life. Life is sex. Sex rots. Rotting flesh. Flesh rotting though living. Living a life of sex-rotten flesh, and flesh gone rotten but living. It's not exactly karma, certainly not divine justice. It's just one of those ugly "coincidences-, like seeing a magpie couple and having a good day. The mind seeks out patterns, an infant hungry and bawling for reasons. Is this because the mind is lonely? Would a reason really make the pain bearable? Make the rotting stop or the rutting less false? "It just is." There's your reason. Now deal with it.

01/11

Do you have recurring dreams? I think most humans have great affection for repetition. I dream of:

1) Having to use the toilet with people watching me.

2) Returning to school, or specifically, having to start it all over again. I hate this dream most of all. I think I'd rather dream about being stabbed.

3) Starring in a play I haven't learnt any lines for.

4) Meeting a beautiful, perfect human, where everything suddenly makes sense, only to then wake up, alone.

5) The end of the world, blurring with

6) my own death, through a variety of means.

01/12

You look out at the world from beneath the threads of your blonde hair, watching them all mill about. You're slightly closer to the crowd than I, but far enough away that we can still hear each other talk. We have more and more in common each passing day now. You are so clever, do you know that? You see the same things I do, but take only half the time to notice them. You're not quite human either, or someone in your gene pool certainly wasn't. A little more than me, but only in the best qualities they offer.

01/13

This keeps happening. I met a footballer, young and dark-haired. We sat on a sofa, with his friends and mine. He sat a little too close. Suddenly I noticed his hand lingering longer upon my shoulder, upon my thigh. Slowly his arm snaked round my back, under my shirt and stroked bare skin. It felt like bliss. I overcame my anxiety, my learned habitual mistrust, and soon reciprocated every daring advance of affection. Soon our friends realised and left us to it. Soon we were naked, sweating, consuming each other. Too soon it ended, and I woke up alone, again.

01/14

"What's the point of you anyway?"I asked, eyes leveled irritably at MS Word.

"I beg your pardon?"Overwrite replied.

"Who uses you? Why would anyone want to "overwrite" anything anyway?-

"You won't understand your reflection,"Overwrite sighed.

"What? You? My reflection? Some pointless little function of two-bit badly-written software? Don't make me laugh.-

"Yes, me. I know my function. My entire existence is dedicated to putting ideas into text. And yet I remain perpetually underused, just a hangover from earlier times, outdated, past my use. I am obsolete.-

"TouchÃƒÆ'Ã‚Â©,"I snorted, and quit the application with a fierce click.

01/15

To Self Pity's seraphim, Sinead O'Connor, I threw away childish things: doodled-on lecture notes, messages exchanged in Chemistry, forged sick letters, old posters, gothic user-manuals and receipts probably still needed. But then I found you. Just a passport-sized portrait, no taller than my thumb but smaller than those receipts, a few memories stapled to it. That went in the chest. Silly, how stark your smile next to money, next to childhood; how even though I'll never see you again and daren't remember, your smile stays in my chest. I know I'll never dig it up again. I've buried the dead.

01/16

It would be difficult, because I know you wouldn't understand. In many ways I'd be releasing a beast back into the wild. You'd think you'd done something wrong, probably think you'd failed somehow. I'd tell you that it was I who'd failed, and still you wouldn't understand. You'd still think it must be something about you. The door would be open, my eyes cast away. Reluctantly you'd realise there's no reason to stay. But even as you'd leave and the door would close, forever, I know you would never realise the absence of any reason was the very reason itself.

01/17

Cancer.

It somehow sounds sore, doesn't it? Somehow sickly. For some reason it makes me think of the sound of metal slicing against metal, the stench of antiseptic on cold white tiles.

Minimal they say. Mini mal: little bad. I knew I should have looked closer at the chromosomes when I chose this body. Shouldn't it bring comfort to know what will end my existence, if only I would live to its natural conclusion?

I don't feel afraid from this haphazard fortune telling by genetics. I've lost my life at least twice before. It's losing my dignity that troubles me.

01/18

Surely I'm more hungover than anyone's ever been. The smell of coffee makes me queasy, whilst the very sight of a doughnut induces vomiting. Hurrah for my appointment in Victoria. It wasn't necessary to go, but I don't get to leave the office often, and fresh air is needed. There's a world out there! The roar of buses and the unintelligible chatter of a station - through the sidestreets with their guttering sprawled over red brick like skeletal fingers, passing gardens with the rich scent of damp earth and pollen. Life! Alive! There is a world of adventures beyond Bloomsbury!

01/19

I should get an honorary degree through the close company I keep with Cambridge graduates. Jonio personally knew nearly everyone in the orchestra, (another perk of a job with a generous boss with a busy schedule) even the guest conductor. It's a bit like having an alternative director's commentary playing in one ear, hearing who there doesn't like girls, who they once woke up in bed with at university and so on. Sometimes I have an out of body experience, and look down on us both as two 18th century aristocratic ladies, gossiping and giggling behind our increasingly fluttering fans.

01/20

This is becoming a fixture. We might have to get married, if it were ever in my nature to do anything so vulgar. Tonight I cooked us liver and fava beans, with the finest Chianti I'd indeed tasted. We watched films and discussed life. I need you to discuss life with. There isn't anyone else whom I can hear sympathetic non-human perspectives from. We seem to exist slightly out of time when we're together. Human order and its miscomprehensions fade away like half forgotten memories, leaving only the brief, evident flicker of beauty in the world to speak for itself.

01/21

Why did you leave me alone? Why won't you now? I came home to endure only the crass claustrophobic copy of the consistently elusive - fleshy protagonists made of hot air, their eyes moving only in two dimensions with Tausworthe's binary boredom. To think that I, whom only earlier had kept my promise to take her back in time by sixty, then six hundred years, could be so humbled by a string of haphazard proteins - the void they pump their loose floating strands into. This planet is all wrong. This is not the way life is supposed to be.

01/22

The irony was not lost on me. Having bought both Alice in Wonderland, and Through The Looking Glass from that shop she loves in Hampstead, (each a little red leather hardback), I suddenly noticed her tattoo. I'd seen it before of course, over seven years in fact, yet only understood it for the first time today. I saw irrefutable Fate. A destiny you cannot escape from, approved by the divine. A Bad Wolf. Every so often there are glimpses into the blissful rabbit hole, away from the madness and absurdity of the everyday world and its ridiculous rules and logic.

01/23

It's impressive what comes from scratching one's lip. We soon fell asleep holding each other. I remember how you looked at me. It was years ago. There, suddenly, your bed, that little room above the estate agents where we both lost something wonderful. I just now, somehow, caught the scent of your sweat upon my unwashed fingers. From one tiny suggestion I am suddenly propelled back through the most epic and profound memories. It shatters any perception of time. It defies linear thought or rational explanation for its associations. The sense of smell is the most powerful of them all.

01/24

We were meant to be at the cinema that night. I quite happily waited, watching the pretty young things file out of work. Talk about Graduate Talent. Sitting in the bohemian little wine bar and drinking a bottle of something South African, one hour to go, the ever increasing war cry was finally uttered - "Shall we just stay here?"You response was duly noted as you refilled my glass. We lounged there in the candlelight and chatter for a while, before you announced we would go to a Turkish restaurant for dinner. We should go to the cinema more often.

01/25

My late uncle telephoned to say Ãƒâ€šÃ¢â‚¬Ëœdon't be afraid'. He'd meet me in the shadows on my way to work. Soon he appeared in person, regardless. Crying, I asked, quite uncharacteristically, if I was good or bad.
He shrugged.
"Would I go upstairs or downstairs when it's all over?"
"It isn't up."
"What can I do?"
"What can any of us do?"he replied. "The longer we live the harder it is to enter Heaven."He left names and numbers to point clues to my salvation.
"You're not my uncle,"I said, furious.
I awoke hearing the demon still laughing.

01/26

Something reminded me today of what, at 17, I thought 25 would be like: exciting, constantly busy, too many parties, working late because I wanted to, chain smoking and feeling only cotton-mouthed afterwards. It would all carry a naughty grown-up-but-not-really feeling, a definite sense of life about to really begin, of spending a few more years as a kid, but finally being able to afford it. So what happened? Where did I mess up? Why do I feel like a 70 year old who never saved for his pension, or missed the boat by seconds? Why does everything feel wrong?

01/27

I'm not sure if it's a queer or just a human preserve, but one or either of them seems peculiarly fascinated with other people's business. They love secrets, love intimacy and things that should be kept private, love to drag them out into the unforgiving glare of a midday sun, where crowds of morons can gawp and stare and try to join in thinking that they understand, that they can join in too. Why can't people learn to mind their own business? Why can't they understand the basic right to privacy, and the walls that protect one individual's own kingdom?

01/28

I left the party before midnight, long after turning into its social pumpkin. Some nice people, but overall I didn't think I had an ego big enough to last in that tiny room. I didn't mind. I loved your letter. I love their new flat, perhaps inciting a playful lover's tiff over the merits of clutter - velvet lined bookshelves heaving under dusty hardbacks versus the crisp clean Japanese minimalism of white walls and candles. Jonio drove me home, the lights speeding past the window reminding me I haven't been on a car adventure with friends in years. I'm doing okay.

01/29

I don't have the determination to kill him instantly. I keep returning to the moment, death frozen in time. Sometimes I hover before the fatal blow, others I watch him move into that fateful fatal alignment. I am Godlike. I can stop it happening. But I don't. I let him walk into death. Is this what God does? Does God not avert disaster because He's lazy? Because He's bound? Because He wants to see what happens? How many disasters does God avert each day? How many lives does He create and destroy with his own imagination, simply because He can?

01/30

I'm starting to live in a bit of a daze, surely another symptom of chronic Januaryness. My head is always so fuggy, like sinusitis. I'm irritable and always seem to snap at everyone. Looking back over my entries here this past month, I'm alarmed I seem to be turning into a dull person. Must make better use of remaining words. Right, today I danced the Varsouviana with a Hollywood film star, watched the sun set over the Sahara and rise over Lapland and read the entire collected works of Shakespeare standing on my head.

Christ, I can't even lie interestingly.

01/31

I sat across the table while he talked, feeling a little like something between reincarnation and a skin long since shed. A tiny bug lay on its back atop the wood between us, desperately flapping its wings and kicking the air. With one quick gentle tap I flipped it over and watched it gleefully scamper to and fro with a newly discovered zeal for walking. I remembered your words, recounting a similar incident: Ãƒâ€šÃ¢â‚¬ËœSometimes all we need is a good nudge to get going again.' What better nudge did this morning bring, than 2600 unpromised words to kiss January goodbye.