Return Of The Rat

Well you better watch out
Well you better beware

1 ) It's all too easy to live a life defined by loss. As with most things emotions, the sensation of loss is one which we can become self-indulgent with, without realising. It is an affliction of an undisciplined imagination, along with regret, hopelessness, depression. We seek blame; we think to ourselves, everything has gone wrong, everything has failed, there is no hope; we subsume into our own marooned ego, desperately overwhelmed by the concept of our own failure - it doesn't matter at what, or even if there is any real failure. Like a shouted conversation in a club by the speakers, we drown out noisy reality with deafening introspection. In these moments, the real mistakes are made. We give up on hope, get trapped in situations we cannot escape from; we give up on love, and pick the scab to the bone, or cut the heart right off; we give up on life, and find ourselves coughing pill after pill down our chest, with a stomach that feels filled with wet sand and a taste like concrete in our mouths. It is because we are narcissists that we fail to comprehend our own potential. We believe that this moment in our lives is the height of our experience; in this moment, our whims reverberate through what we might become - what that means is, there is always a chance to push your life in one direction or another, unless you have given up, sunk to the point where you make decisions that destroy possible futures, remove any chance of love, life, hope. Hedonism is a weakness which parades our exteriors and massages the mirror we see ourself in - if we feel like we're having fun, we must be happy. But even as the attention we crave dissipates as our beauty withers and our lustre fades, we desire it more, craving the attention of those we wish we could become, until like some pampered yapping idiot dog left in an alley we cannot fend for ourselves in nature, and our desperation turns us to the thing we hate the most.

2) People have been dying a lot recently. People I know, people friends of mine know, people in the news, famous people, soldiers, old people, violent deaths, quiet deaths. There is tragedy to it, undeniably, but a purity too: we can scream to the skies that it is not fair, that it hurts, that we wanted a future with those people in, that we will never feel the same way again... and it is all true, and justified, and honest. In a way it reminds us of what we actually love, what we actually believe about people; it hurts to find out these things too late for them to know, but it is a just pain, an honest hurt, one that requires no great analysis or deeper reason. It just is, so we can open our hearts to it and let it fill us. It is part of being human.

3) Things are going well, and things are not going well. The past four weeks have seen me featured as an artist on two websites (they came to me with no prompting) and the past two weeks have seen me gain five commercial clients. However, my landlord has had some major issues in his life, seems to be having some sort of financial crisis, demands money from me every time I see him (money I owe; money he wants to borrow; just this or that from the shop). The bottom line being, I move in a couple of weeks. It's an exciting time, and a scary time. I intend on moving into a place of my own. I am contemplating getting a dog; I would like a red Dobermann. But perhaps it would be cruel; if the jobs I am trying to line up for this summer go according to plan, I will be out of the country for up to three months, and if that works out, regular extended travel will be a feature of my life. We shall see; in the meantime, the accolandes, random fans of my work I meet, satisfactory income and busy diary are keeping me entertained and confident in my own ability.

4) There are many people I miss; besides those I pity who failed in life, whose weaknesses got the better of them and who are necessarily gone from me, I find myself wondering about old loves, old friends, old scenes and places, and wondering if I will ever have anything like that again. Such things aren't the most important to me any more; my life is driven by three desires now - to take pictures, to find someone I can live with as a couple, to see more of the world - but I ache for the things I have put aside now, knowing that the piece of me that hurts is a piece that governed my life for much of my mid-20's. I do not think of it as a better or worse time than where I am now, simply a different time, and I was a different person, and the world was a different place.