21st Century Poem

Questionnaire:

What a clean city. I’m kinda sleepy.
Uniforms. With your name on.
My everyday life.
Thick smoke, no breeze.
And how do you see yourself in fifty year’s time?
[Place for credits of movie about missing persons.]
We plants are happy plants.
200 people faint. Hard to breathe.
Roll up roll up.

Any information you give will be processed by upwards of 200 commercial organisations and an unspecified number of military, governmental, and non—governmental organisations.

Do not get out
What might have been.
She blew a hole right through me.
The more you drive the less intelligent you get.
Hit the road quick.
Oxygen should be regarded as a drug.
Thick smoke not evenly distributed. Visibility 50m.
If you don’t ask me out to dinner I don’t eat.
Lobster-skin-shopping-mall-coffee-stained-lipsync.

The results of this intrusion into your life will be used ‘responsibly’ in ways that you cannot even begin to imagine or comprehend. Of course, the innocent have nothing to fear from the rapidly expanding data industry.

A wardrobe painted in fairground colours.
Story begins with explosion/ends with explosion.
Your fantasies are unlikely but beautiful.
No substitute for a healthy smile.
It occurs to him that if he died that night,
He would have died happy because he was loved.
Has sex ever really moved you to a different place?
Reduced enjoyment and pleasure.
The smoke came back extremely thick and abrasive.

Thank you for your time.

People are aware, but not that bothered.
Authorities here are alert.
Everything I do/say is suspect.
A strangler’s hands.
One of us.
No autonomy. A lethal cocktail. Horrific violence.
I am bad. I am to blame.
I think a little more sucking-up is needed.
Food and water crisis developing.

Have a safe day.

Words on a gravestone: I waited but you never came.
What will we mean? Nothing.
General loss of interest.
He’ll do something silly.
Winning. The last player left in the game is the winner.
A smile like the grim reaper.
Children go to school tied together, led by parents.
Airports closed. People coughing yellow phlegm.
Not sleeping okay. Trapped in hyperspace.

The Beach At Redpoint

The sharp wind cut across the curved spine of the sea wall, the chill whipping through our damp clothes. We were holding hands, pasty, fish-white from the spray of the sea and the drizzling rain. She would turn and look at me occasionally but didn’t say anything, I just smiled at her. Neither of us complained about the cold or damp. We were warm with the alcohol.

Across the water, the fiery lights of Grangemouth soaked the sky above Redpoint an eerie phosporesecent orange in the growing twilight. Nothing mattered, we were together and it had come to this. I had bought her on stolen wine and tonight was ours. I couldn’t explain the growing fear in my gut, I shouldn’t be afraid but I was.

After a mile or so we came to the shack and climbed through the hole in the fence to get to it. The inside smelt of salt, rotting wood and mouldering paper. There wasn’t a mattress or anything else to lie on so I spread my heavy jacket on the ground. We sat in the growing darkness and she produced some tea light candles from her pocket and lit them around us. After a while, shivering and quivering, our bodies met.

That tiny shack at the beach was absolutely the perfect place for my first time.
When we came together, I could feel the hairs growing on my chest.
I saw my future.
I saw my past.
For a few minutes it was like being alive.
They lived happily ever after.
All my questions had been answered.
All my fears disappeared.
All that was left was a kiss.
Every move we made was a kiss…

The Remote Part

The crunchy gravel on the path under my feet used to have railway tracks on it. It’s been flattened now, the sleepers and rails torn up to make way for cyclists and walkers. This was never a commercial railway – it was a coal-board owned one. I wonder how many thousands or millions of tonnes of coal sped their way up and down it when it did exist: coal for industry, coal for families, coal for war, coal for pollution, and atoms for peace.

The pathway is picturesque now, the wilderness cleaved back from it’s edges to reveal the rolling countryside around it. Farms and glades that feel inviting and homely, it’s odd to see them from this perspective as my childhood memories show them from different angles. The path is also strewn intermittently with small signs, some of these provide history on the railroad, others point to entrances to the mining villages the trains that rumbled up and down this track would have picked up their loads from.

The bridges, walls and other man made features are neglected, deep green moss and flowers grow from their cracked surfaces lending an ethereal quality to my journey. One bridge in particular evokes a strong memory, it is high and long – crossing a deep natural ravine. I stop for a while and look into the forest from the bridge, eventually I look down – it must be 80-90 feet high. When I was younger, I got really drunk one night and decided to walk along this very same path to sober myself up, I’d come to this bridge and decided to walk down the steep edge of the ravine and see what was underneath.

This turned out to be nothing, but I remember standing at the bottom at around four am with the burn trickling past me and the pale dawn breaking open the sky above; god, this must have been what, eleven or twelve years ago now? I’d gone under the bridge, sat down and fallen asleep. When I awoke, I was no longer under the bridge but was lying next to the sea wall in Culross, new dawn fully upon me, the keen, nippy Western wind blowing across the Forth chilling my face. I still don’t know how I got there, sleepwalk or blackout, one or the other…

This bridge is also important because it signals that I am near the end of my journey. The path runs for around seventeen miles in total, there is an entrance to it a couple of minutes walk from my mother’s house. My destination leaves the path around eight miles after it’s beginning and I veer off onto a country road. Where the path joins this road is near my Grandmother’s house but this is not the purpose of my journey. It has been years since I have traversed this path, but I remember every twist and turn of it so well I could still navigate it with my eyes closed, I’m glad I don’t have to do this as I am met with a surprising sight upon rounding a bend…

As is common in Fife, there are coal-bings scattered arbitrarily around the countryside near the mining towns; large slag heaps made of dry dirt and shale, the waste products of labour, like cairns to a dead industry marking where the pits that produced them used to be. The bings are ugly black marks that ruin the view and serve as little more than a reminder of a time when the means to produce energy was less clean.

This has changed.

The bing I remember as an ugly blackish-red hillock from my childhood is covered in vegetation, weeds, trees, and flowers. I am amazed that life has managed to cling and blossom in the loose stony earth, the bing now looks like a natural part of the landscape, unnoticeable save for the gate and fencing at it’s foot reminding people to keep off it due to the loose shifting soil. It looks solid – no real danger in climbing it now I suppose?

I consider this for a moment but remember the bunch of flowers in my hand – the real purpose of my journey – and see the other hill and winding path I have to climb in the distance, the cemetery at it’s summit. No time for this now.

I walk on down the road, conflicted and unbalanced by the revelation of the pile of shale I’ve just left, proof that no matter how difficult the condition, life will find a way. This gives little comfort as I ease down the road, not wanting to face what I have to face when I reach the top of the hill.

Chip Shop

Despite my reservations, I am wandering the streets of the town in the company of several people with whom I have little in common. The evening has been dominated by seemingly random forays into pubs populated almost exclusively by large men in vests, with whom I have absolutely nothing in common.

Every glance upwards reveals a sky that has been soaked the colour of undistinguished lager. Every time I attempt to join in the obvious jollity of the occasion I am drowned out by the inadvertant yelping of my compatriots, and I resort to adopting a vacuous yet friendly expression whenever any enquiry is directed in my direction.

We stand in a huddle of indecision outside a brightly-lit doorway, and earnest debate falls around my ears as I watch, with unbelieving nausea, a chef in the chip shop opposite shoo a flaming, but living, pigeon from the window of his establishment. The flying, sputtering lump of flame erupts from the window with an erratic path that is subsumed from my attention by an enquiry from my colleagues regarding money. I answer with rapidity, only to turn my gaze back to find the burning bird has disappeared from view.

After an eternity of boredom we emerge from the club. The pigeon is lying in the gutter, curiously expanded, horribly burnt, utterly dead.

Lurgee

‘I wrote a poem about her around Christmas 2009, although I was a bit drunk at the time I can remember writing the poem clearly.’ I looked at my single audience member to ensure he was listening before I continued, ‘I forgot all about it but remembered I’d written it when I was off work ill, it was odd, my thoughts of everything good about her began to disintegrate after a while. I re-read the poem and found myself looking at the words but I wasn’t sure what any of them meant anymore.’ Dave looked at me curiously as the last words trailed to a whisper on my lips; his eyes seemed to lose a little focus in the confines of the dingy bar. I’d been telling him about the girl, not really knowing what I hoped to achieve in doing so.

‘What made you write the poem in the first place?’ he asked me. I began to wonder why I was even telling him the story and I had to think about it for a bit before going on, ‘I don’t know, I’ve never been one for writing poems about girls; my subject matter is usually abstract – I thrive on the stifled necessity of existence, consistently drawn by a complex narcissism to the ugly. In my opinion, things of beauty usually speak for themselves and require little further description…’

Dave gave me an odd look again and waited for me to continue, ‘I think it’s about someone getting under your skin when you least expect it, then having to deal with it and rationalise it within yourself: it’s about how you become weak, how you become prone and the ways someone else can make you feel bad about yourself.’

‘If she made you feel so bad about yourself, why didn’t you just walk away from it? Surely it would have been easier?’ It was my turn to look baffled, I allowed my thoughts collect and churn in my head before going on: ‘I thought I had done her so much wrong, so much harm that I wanted to make amends for all of it – I wanted to prove I’m a good person and that thorny words soaked in alcohol mean nothing. None of it made any difference, she accepted my apology on the surface, and apparently, everything is ok. I keep trying to move forward but it always stalls and really, what was there isn’t there anymore.’ I’ve finished my beer so take a long pull of the Glenmorangie in front of me and keep my eyes on the table.

‘Did you try? Did you really try? Were you sincere and did you tell her what this was doing to you?’ I was twirling the Whisky around in my glass watching the oily water cling to its sides; I raised my eyes and looked at him, noticing for the first time how badly his hairline had receded. ‘I told her everything, well almost everything, but opening up to her just made things worse – it seemed to awaken the notion of the degree of control she had over me in her conscience. I guess some people just don’t have the emotional maturity to deal with the truth…’

‘That doesn’t make any sense…’ he tells me, ‘well it makes perfect sense to me, she barely treats me as if I’m human these days, it’s a silly manipulative mind-game – devaluation I think it’s called, designed to make the affected party feel worthless and insignificant, bouts of the silent treatment followed by periods of acting normally again. The trick is to keep the other person on their toes by constantly making them wonder what they’ve done wrong in the hope that they’ll keep grovelling, crawling back…the whole thing is pretty masochistic.’

‘Oh yeah, I see where you’re going with this – reminds me of an ex-girlfriend of mine, I got shot of her pretty sharpish, but you, why are you clinging to this? You realise that there is nothing you can do and it’ll only get worse?’ Dave had a curl of a grin at the corner of his mouth now, smug, like he’d just cracked the enigma code. ‘I know that now, it took me a while to realise, I was so full of fear and doubt about things I might have done to her, but I realised it wasn’t me – she needs hurt in her life to cling to. I’m ready to walk away for good now, it’s time to concentrate on the people who have proved time and again that they are there for me unconditionally…’

I’m twirling my drink again, enjoying the feel of the slippery glass under my fingers, ‘Good!’ Dave exclaims, his trickle of smile breaking into a fully-fledged grin, ‘but one thing…if you realised this already then why did you need to speak to me about it?’ I’m a bit sheepish about answering this, ‘well…’ I say, ‘it’s more to do with the poem…although I don’t know what it means anymore …it’s really good …definitely one of my better efforts…. but it’s a false memory of an idealised person that didn’t really exist. I don’t know what to do with it, it’s wrong to destroy art…’

‘It’s your creation, Gav – you need to decide whether it continues or ceases to exist, that’s all I can tell you, the choice is yours. Anyway…I’m going to the bar, same again?’ I nod my approval at this and ponder the problem until he returns. ‘My God!’ he says, looking with surprise at my face, ‘You’re grinning from ear to ear!’ I realise I am, and I feel good, cold German beer slips down my throat like honey.


***


When I’m back in my flat later that evening, I take the Moleskine journal I penned the poem in from the bookshelf and locate the page it is written on. I remove it, tenderly I suppose, from the journal with a gentle tearing motion. The paper feels strange and oily under my fingers, I sit on the couch, light a cigarette and read it over a couple of times. These were once beautiful words: abstract, ill fitting and raw together in a jumble that made sense to me before when I was weaker. I continue to look at the page for a while, noting the lack of resonance the words now have, they are just dull scribbles on a piece of paper.

I crumple it up, put it in the ashtray which I then place upon the sill of the open window. I take my lighter and gingerly set fire to one of the corners poking out from the messy, compacted ball, it catches and begins to burn, I watch the smoke pour out the window, washing the incoherency, fear and doubt into the night sky on a gentle breeze. The burning smell blows back in and hits me and I’m reminded of scrunched up newspapers used to set fire to piles of autumn leaves – I love the autumn, for its sense of melancholy seems to strike my need for sadness. There is poetry in the dying of the year and mystery as well. It’s summer now, but it will pass soon enough.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTip94vtNVM

'He's Fascinated With Opening And Closing Doors...'

My nephew has bounced off every piece of furniture in the living room within the space of five minutes. He has also picked-up, played with and discarded every single one of the multitude of toys that are scattered across the floor, nothing seems able to hold his attention for any length of time. All I can see is a relentless little ball of energy that moves in and out of my vision and gets annoyed when I’m not paying attention to it.

Saying that, I’m curiously fascinated by the little man before me: a person in minature, I see shades of my Grandad, Father and myself in his overjoyed face as he begins to rip pages from a cardboard book full of nonsense characters. This act prompts my sister to get to her feet and scold him for his wanton destruction, I’m too blasé to care and enjoy seeing the enjoyment he obtains from this and the lack of understanding of what he is doing.

It’s a pity that as a species, we are unable to remember a time when simply committing an act for the sheer hell of it without worrying about the implications was possible, this is lost in infancy and develops as we become socially conditioned. Obviously, it’s possible to be a hedonist and live in such a fashion and not care about the implications, but deep down you still know that there are bound to be repercussions involved in any act you commit.

I try to imagine a society without bounds or limits, but the notion of anarchy creeps in seconds into this process negating it before it even really begins. The only state a boundless existence can be captured in is the state of infancy before notions of right and wrong begin to form – enjoyment can never again be pure and unsullied due to the constraints of trying to make your own particular existence a good one, as Kant said; ‘The starry heavens above me, and the moral law within me.’

I never found the Categorical Imperative that reassuring to be honest.

So, I’m free, yet I’m bound, this is the contradiction of existence I find most difficult to deal with, I consistently find that I try to do the right thing, but even doing the right thing can hurt and alienate the people you care about most. I consider the notion of my own freedom (real or imagined) and it’s impact on the people around me to be the thing that causes the majority of my neuroses and sleepless nights, and to be honest, I often wish the night were quieter for me. Maybe it would be simpler just to shut everyone out and I wouldn’t have to worry so much anymore – that’s the trouble with ‘letting people in’.

I stumble out of this little reverie…

My nephew has managed to reach up to the kitchen door handle and is trying to open it with his clumsy inarticulate little hand, he knows that my mother is behind the door as she keeps popping her head around it to talk him, my sister or me whilst simultaneously making breakfast in an absurdly large frying pan. For all his effort and growing intelligence, my nephew is unsuccessful in his endeavour and begins to get frustrated and gurney – I shouldn’t find this amusing but I do. My sister turns to me, smiles and says, ‘He’s fascinated with opening and closing doors.’

I think on this for a second before remarking, ‘well, that’s something that runs in the family at least…’

Viva Largs Vegas

The still of the water is occasionally broken by the lurch of the Cumbrae ferry as it docks or departs towards Millport, its deck strewn with tourists and shoppers. Further ashore, the sun drenches the promenade in white light bounced refractively on the surface of the Holy Loch changing its hue in a dancing shimmer. The air hangs heavy and hot, the only bluster comes from the throng of bodies making their way along the concrete path, one of which will occasionally dash after a dog that has slipped its lead making a break for open water.

My glass sweats beads of moisture onto the table in front of me on the outdoor table as the dull ease of the world unfolds before me. I see people of all sizes, ages and descriptions slide through my vision: young, old, fat, thin, ugly, beautiful. This being Scotland, they’re mostly fat and ugly. Fugly. Secretly, I had hoped that there would be more beautiful girls to watch, there’s something about seeing a beautiful woman in the sunlight…

This is not a glorious world-famous resort – this is Largs, or ‘Lards’ as I have started to referring to it inwardly owing to the amount of morbidly obese people I’ve witnessed walking around. The shore is not beautiful, it is covered in a variety of large and small stones and I am almost tempted to walk down to the waterfront and chuck a few into the loch – there’s something psychologically satisfying about the sound a stone makes as it breaks water. The shore is full of kids and dogs; I would look out of place there.

The table I’m sat at is a garden-variety picnic bench under a fabric awning lining the front of the bar; Grant and Nikki sit across from me. I’m absorbed watching a group of nuns making their way up the promenade, one of them, probably the only one below the age of ninety suddenly makes a break (or rather an amble) for it and gets away from the pack. She is munching on an ice cream cone and I can see her false teeth sliding around in her mouth as she laps greedily at it. The nun notices me looking at her, smiles and is about to wave, Grant sneezes.

Still looking at the nun I say, ‘bless you’ a little too loudly, the nun says ‘and you son’, she hobbles off, delighted to be in the sun and eating ice cream. I smile inwardly at the innocence of this and the simple misunderstanding of the gesture. The nuns trundle off into the distance to be replaced by other less circumspect characters, Grant and Nikki fawn over the different breeds of dogs they see – I know nothing about dogs but I’m enjoying their banter.

I feel at ease with the world, it’s been a while since I’ve felt this relaxed. The simple presence of sunlight can do wonders for one’s mood and outlook on life, hot light satisfies some of the hungers that are more difficult to satiate. ‘What about the Hoff?’ Grant asks me lazily, ‘Huh?’ I say, turning to face him, ‘Is he still there?’ I look down the shore to check.

We spotted him on our way up to the bar, lying on a towel on the rocky beach with nothing on but a pair of blue and red trunks that look like they were purchased from the 1984 Debenham’s catalogue: His body is slight and wiry, yet coloured a natural bronze that would put a Californian to shame, his hair is long, unkempt, its colour is black, streaked with cigarette-ash grey. He looks like a small castaway and from what I can tell he hasn’t moved since we passed him on our way here an hour ago.

‘Yeah, he’s still there’, I tell them. We indulge in some light-hearted conversation for a while making observations and being observed by others. Eventually the Hoff gets up.

The three of us watch him make his way down to the water as he wades in to his ankles, bends down and splashes some salt-water on to his face. Many others have stopped their tracks and loiter to watch the spectacle of the lonely sunbather on the craggy shore. He stands for a while facing out into the depths, hands on his hips like Phineas awaiting the Harpies. This seems to go on for an age, but he retreats as the ferry arrives and sends cascades of breakwater up his body.


The Hoff makes his way back to the spot where his towel and belongings lie, pulls on the simple attire of black t-shirt, black jeans and black trainers, shaking the sand out of the latter before putting them on. He makes his way to one of the amusement arcades, straps on a leather money pouch and begins touting for business from the marks on the prom, unaware that his very existence and actions have caused more amusement and pleasure than his cackle of machines will ever be able to.

You Could Feel The Sky...

The living room in the flat is small but it lets in a lot of light, about a quarter of the wall surface gives out to a large corner bay window – the benefits of tenements. I’ve sat here for most of the day watching the sky change, it started out clear and even, no clouds, serene, warm, static, save for the odd grumble of an engine or a door banging shut.

It’s afternoon now and things have changed. I hear gulls squawking as they fight for scraps of food on the melting tarmac, children laughing, frequent traffic on the roads and arguments in the street. I’ve changed too, I’ve moved from my morning seat on the sofa to the chair at my desk by the window.

I watch people of all nationalities, although usually under-represented minorities enter and leave the immigration centre opposite my building. From my citadel, I try to give them features, notice what they’re wearing, some distinguishing mark that will allow me to recognise them when they leave again. I remember a black guy entering this morning, he was wearing a jacket the colour of the pink chrysanthemums that used to grow in the garden of my parent’s house, he never came back out again – sometimes they don’t.

The place is a flurry of activity, there are always people coming and going, security guards closing gates, secretaries going for lunch and gossiping smokers loitering in the heat. I’m too high up to hear their conversations and at this distance lip reading is impossible, I don’t have the guile or imagination left in me to invent the hypothetical conversations they could be having.

The three Immigration buildings themselves are indistinct in their mediocrity, low and flat like military tents, aside from what looks like a guard tower jutting from the top of each. I have never seen anyone inside any of these towers, despite the fact that they are glass surrounds, they exist to establish the notion of diligence – nothing else.

In the background the spires of the Science Centre and the University point to the flux of sky ironically. The ancient building developed to increase our understanding of the world, the universe and culture, the other designed as a monument to Glasgow as a place of culture and diversity. The notion of the goodness of either disperses as my focus returns to the squat buildings in front of my flat, modern and brazen on the bank of a river that sent a million Scottish immigrants to the New World.

I have to stop thinking about it because it doesn’t do me any good.

I return my attention to the sky and watch a front of sluggish clouds work their way up the Clyde Valley towards the city. The sky: always shifting, always transitory, always forgetting; The clouds are melting, slowly, darkly, deeply in the pale azure of the sky, blown and disintegrating before my eyes, I have no idea where they’ll end up.

God Is Our Logic:

Or maybe not?

Ok, so you might be wondering where this is going – I’ll concede that its an odd title for a first post. I guess what I’m really trying to do here is set the scene for everything that is going to follow on from this. Let the stories begin…

Around April 2004, I remember receiving a text message from a friend, let’s call him Jed. The small monochrome phone screen confronted me with five words: ‘God is our Logic – discuss.’ My response was suitably defensive and militant, running along the lines of: ‘in order for Logic to exist, it must rest on the principle of a fundamental and inherent human truth, the existence of God is not a fundamental and inherent human truth, therefore, God cannot represent inherent human Logic.’

I was a second year under-grad at this point, swaggering around King’s College Campus in the sunshine wearing a fully buttoned fawn Duffel coat that predated my own existence by two years. The ideas (or ideals) that filled my head were not my own, they belonged to Wittgenstein, Kant, Russell and Kierkegarrde. Like all young men who begin a love affair with philosophy and the pursuit of knowledge I liked to think these ideas had somehow become part of me, and through my participation and understanding, I had collectively become part of them.

In short, I felt intellectually superior, that I had something to prove, that my own ideas would one day rival those of all the intellectual heavyweights whose work I greedily devoured on a daily basis. I wanted to dedicate my life to answering the questions that had plagued thinkers since the concept of philosophising evolved...

Obviously, that never happened.

The thing that surprised me most about the text message was that Jed was a staunch atheist, I had witnessed him engaged in earnest debate with co-workers around the subject of religion defending the atheistic perspective with passion and vigour. What had prompted this radical about-turn and coerced a rational human being into believing that humanity was in some way pre-disposed or hardwired into a logical schema based around a single God?

Something that did cross my mind was that perhaps he had begun to see a pattern in nature that the rest of us were oblivious to, something that could bring this disjointed mess called humanity closer together. The question stayed with me, and I asked Jed about it at work a few days later but he was dismissive of it claiming my argument had nullified the base of his question. Looking back, I realise how ridiculous that sounds, but as mentioned, Jed was extremely intelligent and that old remark about the line between genius and madness being a thin one was loitering uncomfortably in the recesses of my mind.

Jed was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic around two months after I received this flawed propositional gem from him. I worked with him part time in a call centre on evenings and weekends, and although I didn’t see him all that often, maybe a part of me realised he was beginning to disintegrate on the occasions I did see him.

It was fascinating, but slightly perverse to watch someone unravel in this way. The guy was a natural intellect – very bright and always full of great ideas for doing things better – within the company and outside of it. Then the ideas began to change into other things: an obscure reference in a street sign would become a portent of impending doom or the end of the world; he believed that one our managers was the devil incarnate, and that when people spoke, they did so in colours rather than words.

For all my arrogance, my vigour, my propensity to try and understand the true purpose and nature of humanity, I could not understand this individual’s change in perception. Or, retrospectively, perhaps I chose not to understand it – I didn’t want to consider that another human being could undergo a massively radical change in underlying process in such a short time frame.

I lost touch with Jed after he was sectioned, from speaking with mutual friends I believe he still resides in a mental health institution.

So, what am I admitting here? That I’m a bad person? That I should have spent a bit more time and effort with Jed after he was diagnosed? That I’m uncaring? No. I just don’t think that I had the necessary emotional faculties to deal with it at the point in my life when this occurred. If all truth be told, I rarely think of some of the centuries dead philosophers whose work I studied, but the question ‘God is our Logic – Discuss’ pops into my head at least twice a month, and I want, I NEED, to answer it but I can’t.

I’m an Absurdist – the very existence of the question undermines the fundamentals of my position.

Perhaps it all stems from the fact that I am simply unable to understand humanity to the degree I would like to. I’ve always tried my hardest to see the good in everyone but this has become increasingly difficult as I’ve become older, jaded and more cynical. Everyone I meet seems to have become more tarnished, and I don’t like saying this, but more…well…broken…

I think this is called life – I hope against all hope it isn’t, but I don’t think anyone is going to prove me wrong at any point soon.

Its sometimes best to take a closer look at the world when the sun is shining, it’s often when the light is brightest that you see the really minute, deep-running cracks appear.