Everything All Of The Time
"I'll laugh until my head comes off, I'll swallow until I burst, until I burst, until I..."
Can't get that song out of my head these last few days, Thom Yorke singing here I'm allowed everything all of the time over and over again inside my brain until I feel as though it might drive me insane. Funny thing is, listening to the song does nothing to alleviate the frustration of having it play on a loop between my ears almost all the time. In fact, I don't even particularly want to listen to it. I'm just trying to cure what ails me.
I have the day off tomorrow/today. The last one was Friday, but that feels like something that happened weeks or months ago. It's all this time spent focussing my attention on Home Entertainment abbreviations and Visas and all the Thank You cards I should have sent to the people who sent wishes and money when they found out I was getting married. I haven't been alone in my head much, and it's making me disinterested and irritable. I'm going to take care of everything I can tomorrow, and then I'm going to get drunk. If I'm lucky, Thom will shut the hell up.
We're not scaremongering
This is really happening
Happening
We're not scaremongering
This is really happening
Happening
An old friend came into the store a couple of days ago. It was a strange experience for me. One half of my brain was reeling at the change he'd gone through since the last time I'd seen him; the other immediately jumped back three years into the past, both to draw a contrast and to remember things I'd forgotten. It's funny how you sometimes think you're just wasting your time until you find a point of reference and realise that you've travelled a quite incredible distance. Back in the summer of 2002, my old friend and I were at the Leeds festival. He was holding court in front of the fire like some drunken Buddha, sitting cross-legged before a rapt group of converts that had just accepted him as some kind of mascot/messiah. I was standing back in the shadows, thinking about my own problems and not having much of a good time. Back then, it was a contrast to the year before, when C and I had run rampant on every substance that came our way, seen some amazing gigs, and had one of the great lost weekends of my life. That night there were more of us, and those numbers had somehow stolen the magic from the whole experience. I wasn't as drunk or wild as I wanted to be, disappointed both in myself and everyone around me. It was like returning to a fire you'd once lit and finding only ashes.
Ice age coming
Ice age coming
Let me hear both sides
Let me hear both sides
Let me hear both
He looked old and tired and somehow hollow, sunken eyes glistening with the glaze of exhaustion, uneven patches of stubble painting his cheeks and jaw.
"I'm working seventy hours a week," he told me, and then, as though it made everything okay: "The money's good."
I nodded, smiled, scanned the film he was renting.
"We should get together sometime, have a drink," he said.
"We will," I said.
We won't.
Later, I found myself thinking of the people I'd surrounded myself with back then, feeling a little sad for the ones I knew about, wondering about those I didn't. I wasn't sure how to place myself. On the one hand, I'm no longer one of the stumbling lonely. On the other, I'm working a stupid job for a company I actively loathe and going through a process that will hopefully see me eventually relocate some 5,000 miles away so that I can be with my wife. I'm more than happy with the probable outcome, but the process bothers the hell out of me. I keep thinking of likely dates for all this to be over and counting the wasted days between now and then, of all the things that could conceivably happen to one of us before we finally get where we're going. I hate it, and I wish I was the person I sometimes claim to be, the person that would have raised both middle fingers to the world, just gone to her and stayed there. In the end, I'm not that person, and I was too afraid of getting caught. I'm only ever an outlaw in my dreams.
There wasn't much time between the end of that shift and the start of the next, but when I got home, sleep seemed distant. I grabbed one of my stepdad's beers from the fridge and ran a hot bath. I lay down and killed the can in five or six hits, then read until the words ran together. Suddenly I was dreaming, living out in some American nowhere, working outdoors beneath clear skies and a sun that left me warm and aching. We cut down trees and built fences, carried wood and bales of hay on our shoulders. I was lean and pale and pretty, my hair growing ever lighter until twenty-five years of red finally gave way before the blonde I was born with. When the day came to an end, we sat around a fire drinking whiskey and smoking hand-rolled cigarettes. Someone played guitar and I invented new lyrics for songs I didn't know. The eyes of my audience were curious and surprised, and I was delighted that they didn't know me, that I could reinvent myself. With a buzz born of alcohol and acceptance, I'd go home to Jennifer and watch her eyes while our conversations rolled from the sublime to the ridiculous and back again. We'd make love and then lie there smoking cigarettes, sweat drying on our bodies while the moonlight streamed through the windows and rendered everything in black and white, like a scene from some old movie. I was happy. I was so happy that I never had to think.
I awoke with the book resting on my chest, its pages swollen with water. I walked naked to my room and stood at the window, watching thin clouds race across the midnight sky and wishing for a cigarette.
Women and children first
And children first
And children
The next morning felt like a hangover. I bought cigarettes on my way to the bus stop. Five minutes later, I crushed the unopened packet and threw it into a bin. It was trying hard to be spring, but angry clouds rolled heavy and low across the sky, propelled by a wind that threatened violence. The thought of seeing the same old bus people and then the same old customers filled me with a dread disproportionate to the size of the task. I toyed with my wedding ring and listened to the music in my head. I thought about the past and the future. I tried not to dream too hard.
Can't get that song out of my head these last few days, Thom Yorke singing here I'm allowed everything all of the time over and over again inside my brain until I feel as though it might drive me insane. Funny thing is, listening to the song does nothing to alleviate the frustration of having it play on a loop between my ears almost all the time. In fact, I don't even particularly want to listen to it. I'm just trying to cure what ails me.
I have the day off tomorrow/today. The last one was Friday, but that feels like something that happened weeks or months ago. It's all this time spent focussing my attention on Home Entertainment abbreviations and Visas and all the Thank You cards I should have sent to the people who sent wishes and money when they found out I was getting married. I haven't been alone in my head much, and it's making me disinterested and irritable. I'm going to take care of everything I can tomorrow, and then I'm going to get drunk. If I'm lucky, Thom will shut the hell up.
We're not scaremongering
This is really happening
Happening
We're not scaremongering
This is really happening
Happening
An old friend came into the store a couple of days ago. It was a strange experience for me. One half of my brain was reeling at the change he'd gone through since the last time I'd seen him; the other immediately jumped back three years into the past, both to draw a contrast and to remember things I'd forgotten. It's funny how you sometimes think you're just wasting your time until you find a point of reference and realise that you've travelled a quite incredible distance. Back in the summer of 2002, my old friend and I were at the Leeds festival. He was holding court in front of the fire like some drunken Buddha, sitting cross-legged before a rapt group of converts that had just accepted him as some kind of mascot/messiah. I was standing back in the shadows, thinking about my own problems and not having much of a good time. Back then, it was a contrast to the year before, when C and I had run rampant on every substance that came our way, seen some amazing gigs, and had one of the great lost weekends of my life. That night there were more of us, and those numbers had somehow stolen the magic from the whole experience. I wasn't as drunk or wild as I wanted to be, disappointed both in myself and everyone around me. It was like returning to a fire you'd once lit and finding only ashes.
Ice age coming
Ice age coming
Let me hear both sides
Let me hear both sides
Let me hear both
He looked old and tired and somehow hollow, sunken eyes glistening with the glaze of exhaustion, uneven patches of stubble painting his cheeks and jaw.
"I'm working seventy hours a week," he told me, and then, as though it made everything okay: "The money's good."
I nodded, smiled, scanned the film he was renting.
"We should get together sometime, have a drink," he said.
"We will," I said.
We won't.
Later, I found myself thinking of the people I'd surrounded myself with back then, feeling a little sad for the ones I knew about, wondering about those I didn't. I wasn't sure how to place myself. On the one hand, I'm no longer one of the stumbling lonely. On the other, I'm working a stupid job for a company I actively loathe and going through a process that will hopefully see me eventually relocate some 5,000 miles away so that I can be with my wife. I'm more than happy with the probable outcome, but the process bothers the hell out of me. I keep thinking of likely dates for all this to be over and counting the wasted days between now and then, of all the things that could conceivably happen to one of us before we finally get where we're going. I hate it, and I wish I was the person I sometimes claim to be, the person that would have raised both middle fingers to the world, just gone to her and stayed there. In the end, I'm not that person, and I was too afraid of getting caught. I'm only ever an outlaw in my dreams.
There wasn't much time between the end of that shift and the start of the next, but when I got home, sleep seemed distant. I grabbed one of my stepdad's beers from the fridge and ran a hot bath. I lay down and killed the can in five or six hits, then read until the words ran together. Suddenly I was dreaming, living out in some American nowhere, working outdoors beneath clear skies and a sun that left me warm and aching. We cut down trees and built fences, carried wood and bales of hay on our shoulders. I was lean and pale and pretty, my hair growing ever lighter until twenty-five years of red finally gave way before the blonde I was born with. When the day came to an end, we sat around a fire drinking whiskey and smoking hand-rolled cigarettes. Someone played guitar and I invented new lyrics for songs I didn't know. The eyes of my audience were curious and surprised, and I was delighted that they didn't know me, that I could reinvent myself. With a buzz born of alcohol and acceptance, I'd go home to Jennifer and watch her eyes while our conversations rolled from the sublime to the ridiculous and back again. We'd make love and then lie there smoking cigarettes, sweat drying on our bodies while the moonlight streamed through the windows and rendered everything in black and white, like a scene from some old movie. I was happy. I was so happy that I never had to think.
I awoke with the book resting on my chest, its pages swollen with water. I walked naked to my room and stood at the window, watching thin clouds race across the midnight sky and wishing for a cigarette.
Women and children first
And children first
And children
The next morning felt like a hangover. I bought cigarettes on my way to the bus stop. Five minutes later, I crushed the unopened packet and threw it into a bin. It was trying hard to be spring, but angry clouds rolled heavy and low across the sky, propelled by a wind that threatened violence. The thought of seeing the same old bus people and then the same old customers filled me with a dread disproportionate to the size of the task. I toyed with my wedding ring and listened to the music in my head. I thought about the past and the future. I tried not to dream too hard.
posted by Michael at 2:31 PM
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