When you drink it makes you angry, when I drink I want you more and more and more...
A great game tonight. Hurricanes take the points. An old team mate played twenty-odd minutes and acquitted himself well, made a crunching tackle that might even make "Smashed 'Em Bro" next week with any luck. Rugby in my veins, but no cartilage in my knees. It is sad to watch but I can't help it. I love that fucking game.
Trying to dial up the positivity over the last few days. Writing music is greatly helping my mentality; as too is my brother's genius on the guitar. Hadn't really realised how much I missed this whole music buzz, and having an extra-curricular activity away from the keys is a nice feeling (even though I write all my lyrics on the computer, too). Jamming next week with an ex-band mate of both my brother and I. Looking forward to this immensely as this dude is a freak on the drums, a great old friend, and a damn good laugh. Should be a good day of music and talking shit.
I was thinking about how much living there is left to do. It is tiring just to contemplate. If I go on to defeat this illness, get back on my feet, and forge a life for myself, there will be a damn-sight more day-to-day drudgery than I care to really reflect on right now. Life is a beautiful thing some days - if only, sometimes, for fleeting seconds - and on others, a horrid, grotesque thing to behold. I wish I could pinpoint the exact day that life stopped being an adventure and became a battle. I have an idea of the time this happened, but it is not the time to dredge that up right now. That is between us two. And besides, who can say that tomorrow I won't meet someone, or discover something that ignites a long-forgotten passion in me. I could be a veritable hive of activity next week - going about a plan to re-launch myself to the world with streamers flying and ticker-tape spilling from the sky like colourful tears of happiness. There might even be fireworks; I'm a fan of pyrotechnics.
And that, you subtle saints, is perhaps the crux of this whole life-threatening sickness. I have to attempt to keep believing that at any moment my life will take an upswing. I have to keep faith that the world will unveil some brand new marvel that tugs my heart-strings and sends me reeling off on a beautiful adventure, like a small stone deflecting off a larger rock. Colour me stupid. It is so hard to see the forest for the trees when you are amongst all of this turmoil and filth. I've got to keep my eyes peeled for a miracle.
Met a beautiful girl in a bar last night with long legs and lustrous, dark hair. Lost her number somewhere between the bar and home, which is only a matter of a few hundred metres. Ho ho, fate is a cruel fiend. I will attempt to think as my brother and countless others do - try to understand that everything happens for a reason. There are no accidents. I do not readily subscribe to this theory. It is too neat, too easily garbled and misinterpreted to strike me as a truth. But I will try to understand it better. I am, after all, a cynical but still open-minded man. I'll give most things a go at least once. And in a subtle sort of way, it is a comforting thought. I think that is what worries me most about it - from what I know of the world (paltry though my knowledge may be) there is no such thing as a free and easy comfort. Nothing comes so neatly packaged, so beautifully decorated, so reassuringly safe as that. Life is a trade-off, and the dealer is in it for profit. Life is not a charity, and the world is not in the business of philanthropy. We pay, and we pay dearly.
I have been thinking about chaos theory lately, also. This is the theory that the smallest action can trigger a raft of inter-connecting phenomena. The most readily accessible and easy to understand example is of a butterfly somewhere in Africa that flaps its wings, and sets off a chain of events that culminates in a huge cyclone hitting the coast of America. The science of this must be mind boggling. I am interested in it for the chaos element. It is, as far as my warped and muddled mind can ascertain, a conceivable theory. Who is to say exactly what triggers anything in the world? The smallest, most inconsequential action could, in theory, be the finger on the button of a cataclysmic occurrence, or even a large-scale prosperous one. A small stone rolling down a hill could be the catalyst for the blooming of a rare and beautiful flower somewhere in the depths of a Guatemalan jungle. Who can say for sure?
But listen, I've had enough of discussing those things. I want to talk about you lot. I want to ask about your lives, and the aspects of it that are enriching. Do you have something in your existence - either now, or in the future - that gets your blood flowing? Try to find something if you haven't. I have been devoid of such a thing for a very long time now, and I am trying to find a raft of new ones to help me open my eyes, clear my head, and move my body in the mornings. Savage at heart. My words have been good for me, but I think music will be crucial. I am more excited about the prospect of playing shows and creating new songs than I have been about anything except her return from overseas at the end of '06. That is two and a half years of not much to nourish my soul but her love (that faded and died). It is time to manufacture something - anything, almost - to fan the flames of my excitement. I am so tired of the weight of this affliction.
I am trying to engender the feelings I used to have for life. This small action is positive, and that is progress. My life has been on pause for too long now. It is time to push play, if only in a few respects. Life is a many-faceted puzzle. I have the most important piece - I am alive - so I can begin to put the rest together in a fitting way. Wish me luck, snowflakes.
So on to trivial happenings in my life. My hair is growing back quickly. My beard is now only stubble. My waistline continues to shrink slowly but surely. The scar on my knuckles is still scar-tissue, but it will soon be a memory. The scars under my eyes are the same. My need to love, and be loved in return, is still insatiable. My will to find someone to share this with, however, is still dented beyond recognition. It is still a smouldering wreck, piled up beside smouldering wrecks of all the other crashes that have happened in my life these last 12 months. I drove off the road with my eyes shut tight and my seat belt undone. Lucky to survive, to be sure. My vocal ability is improving the more I sing. I was rusty after five years absence from music. My knees are still shot, and I am still scared about recommitting myself to the rugby field in case I ruin them completely. I feel my ankle and my knees when the weather gets cool, so winter will be another few months of squeaky joints and distant arthritic echoes, drifting to me from my future like mocking jeers from a partisan crowd. Titanium knees will be cool to have. I can pretend I'm the 6 million dollar man, just a little worse for wear. I guess 6 million dollars doesn't buy you quite as much technology these days.
The words are rifling onto the page tonight. It feels good. I am in a good phase, linguistically and otherwise, I suppose. It must be exasperating to you all to see me fluctuating so wildly from high to low and back. I apologise. Whatever frustration you experience when you read these weird and oft-times crazy chapters is but a tiny portion of the frustration and loathing I feel about it. I used to be a level-headed guy. Hell, I used to be all sorts of things, many of them positive. Funny how life always finds your biggest weaknesses and exposes them. There's no getting out of this alive.
What is your favourite title out of the many I have used on this site?
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