READ MY WORK

Ideas Above Our Station
new collection of shorts, one of which was written by me,
http://www.route-online.com/routev7/page.asp?idno=292

Nine Stop Trip
even newer collection of shorts, all of which were written by me,
http://chipmunkapublishing.co.uk/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=65

Ever get that feeling like, every time you pick yourself up you just get kicked in the nuts again?

I've been on a mission over the last few weeks to take some direct, positive action towards not feeling quite so shit all the time. Moved into the spare room, did some writing, even started building myself a bit of a social life.

The various weights of a soul destroying day job, dying grandparents, a stalling live in relationship, old scars and recent pains were all hanging fairly evenly from my depression and I felt I was starting to get the balance.

Now funnily enough I was starting to feel a little bit weird again last week. Back to not being able to sleep, then endless mentalist nightmares when I do.

Thought I'd just ride it out however, so the spontaneous drink and drug fuelled bender on Saturday night courtesy of a visiting GeordieKeith, (easy bro ;) ) was a welcome distraction.

After a lot of consumption and very little sleep however, I was rudely awoken by the phone and my mum telling me that she's leaving my dad. They are done.

Nice huh?

I don't think it's really sunk in yet, and I'm sure there's plenty of mileage in this one yet, but to be honest it just feels like one more shovel load.

Having to take my dad's car back later that day after just a few short hours kip wasn't brilliant but fuck it. It's shit and it hurts, what else is new?

I'll be alright, or at least I'll be about the same. It's just one more reason to become a hugely successful novelist and tell everything in my life to fuck right off.

A warm house surrounded by green in which to smoke, write and party. That's the dream peeps, that's the dream.

Apologies for the prolonged and whinging preamble here but just as this blog spans a multitude of topics it also serves a multitude of purposes, one of which is to serve as a vent for me :)

So anyway, I have notes for about half a dozen blogs on hold here on my desktop. Just trotting out cold ideas doesn't feel right for here somehow so I either write about it straight away or wait until something inspires me to explore an idea further.

This is one I've had sat around for ages but only had two examples. The third fell into my lap today however and so here we are.

Finishing a long, breakless day at the office, everything was sitting on top of me and I was feeling pretty grey as I headed for the outside.

As I stepped out into the car park however, something happened. The sky was violently blue and the sun painfully yellow and for an instant there was nothing else.

Glorious, glorious sunshine made me feel utterly free and at peace, just for a few moments.

Walking on to the bus I reflected on this experience and got a feel for where the liberating aspect of standing in the sun stemmed from.

It seems to me that that experience is one that we can share with every single human since before humans were humans, not to mention most animals too.

A deeply primal thing, these few simple seconds can reach right through the trappings of our 'civilised' society and into the backs of our brains.

Grabbed by the stem, we are animals once more and, as with animals, there is no concept of material things as we, and everything else, are just parts of the world.

You may say hippy nonsense and I may say bite me, but the fact is we're nowhere near as far away from our ancient 'pre-Eden' selves as we love, or hate, to think.

Second up there's another seemingly universal feeling, (is there anyone out there who has never experienced this?) the whole, jumping-awake-because-you-feel-you-are-falling thing.

That jolt is not just a mild unconscious scare, but is apparently a hang over not from before we were humans, but from before we were even upright! It is reportedly an instinct we developed to stop ourselves falling out of trees as we slept.

Now I can't remember where I heard that so I can't reference it. Whether this particular point is true or not though I find it fascinating to recognise how much we still share with ancestors we thought so distant.

The third is the whole feeling-that-someone-is-watching-you sensation. Sometimes there is someone, sometimes there isn't, or at least you don't see anyone.

It's a bit creepy, especially when you feel there's someone watching you from behind, ie. you're not seeing them out of the corner of you eye, you can just feel it.

Well apparently this is another appendix, another evolutionary hangover. Back in the mists of prehistory the was a time when our ancestors were not kings of the earth but prey just like everything else.

The purpose of this sensation then, be it the result of normally imperceptible sensory stimuli or just an occasional random feeling, was to protect us from things with big fuck off teeth.

Not only do these things remind us of how connected to our past and the planet we are but they also demonstrate the kind of timescales within which evolution operates.

Is it any wonder then that the more technologically advanced our society gets the more a strange pervading sense of alienation, disorientation and isolation grows among inhabitants.

Adbusters have spent years describing this weird and terrible feeling. Check them for more.

The point being that the technology and practices we are developing are evolving far faster than we can cope with. The more we try to move away from our roots in Eden, instead of embracing them, the more lost we become

Seems like you can take the man out of the garden...