I’m a Thought-Train Hobo

No matter where I am or what I’m doing, when a train of thought rumbles through my mind I pick up my bottle and jump into the box car.  I ride the train until it stops somewhere, I hop off and I look around.

It’s a compulsion.  I don’t realise what I’m doing until miles of landscape have rushed past and I’m making myself comfortable among the crates.  And hell, when I’m on the train already I might as well see where it’s going.

I’m a transient by nature.  Without a home, but at home anywhere the train pulls up.  Just like a swallow migrates and salmon swim against the river to breed, I ride the thought-trains.

It’s why I have such trouble being in the moment.  I’m always on a train, always moving somewhere.  It’s the only life I’ve ever known.

Like any Romantic lifestyle, though, it takes its toll.  When you never settle anywhere, you become isolated from everywhere.  And you become isolated from everyone because, at the end of the day, it’s only ever going to you in the box car.

From the Department of the Obvious

I've been doing my best to practice with my drum.  I am the rhythmic equivalent of the number zero (thank you Mr Pratchett), and so I've been sitting with my metronome and playing at 80 bpm for five minutes a day.  Well, for five minutes some days.  Regular practice, I think, eloped with my sense of rhythm.  But I figure little and often is better than trying to do it all in one go.  If I can beat a steady rhythm, then I can concentrate on the journey and not have to worry about anything else.  I can only do that when the beat becomes instinctive. 

I have found the practice to be somewhat soothing and hypnotic.  Who'd have thought that, hey?

The other thing I've noticed is that I have real trouble, 'being here now'.  My mind is always somewhere in the future or the past, and is terrified of the prospect of the present.  I'm thinking about what's going to happen when I meet X or go to Y, and I find I'm wound up about it.  And when I get to X and Y, I'm upset when things don't go as planned.  I ignore anything which I don't want there.  Why is it so terrifying to just let whatever will be, be?

Easter weekend was nice, although very, very poor.  There's something deeply wrong about an Easter with no Easter Eggs.  Or hot-cross buns.  The weather was lovely, though, and we took a walk up the mountain outside our house.  We passed a farm with some free-range laying hens, and I indulged my fantasy of roast chicken.  They looked like the sort of hens they put on the front of egg boxes.  Then we came home to minced Quorn pie and mash.  Nice but... roast chicken?

Still, pay day tomorrow and cheques cleared today.  That means I have pizza for tea.  I've also brought myself a gadget which will plug into my mp3 player and play it through my car stereo.  Saves on CD's and on long car journeys, I can just put the player onto Play All, and not have to worry about changing CD's when I should be changing lanes.  Of course, it's just going to transfer the argument from, 'who's CD do we play next', to 'who's mp3 player do we plug in'.  Maybe I'm old, but that's what real progress looks like.

On My Lunch, I Lay By the Lake and Listened to the Birds

Permanence is the problem.

We want things to last. When we have a good day, we want it to last forever. We want the good things in our life to always be there. That leads us to wanting to expel the bad things. And that leads us to want to control, and believing we can control.

We want the friend we make today to be a friend tomorrow. We want the lover we take today to love us tomorrow.

I had a moment, about three minutes’ worth, when I thought about a world where we didn’t crave permanence. Where we just took what life was offering us right here, right now, and made the most of it.

The lover we take today may be indifferent to us tomorrow. They may be someone else’s lover, and why would we worry about that? I was walking down the road, kicking a pine cone. There were birds singing, and cars passing a street away. The sun was shining, but the wind had a chill. A few spots of rain had fallen on me.

The lover we take today may wake up with us tomorrow, and we can fall in love all over again. The enemy we made yesterday can be the shoulder we cry on today.

And everyone’s okay with this, everyone expects this and everyone understands this, so why should there be any problems?

Then I got back into work, and sat down at my desk. Some days I love work, and some days I hate it. I just put on my work persona and it doesn’t matter.

But maybe, the secret me can discover coffee for the first time. Maybe he can appreciate the kindness of a co-worker without qualms, without history and without suspicion. It’s a big ask, but when I was kicking my pine cone I was quite content. There was me, the cone, the sounds and the sun, we all had our place and it was all good. ‘Content’ is a way station I would very much like to reach.

Weather it Matters

The weather has been beautiful today. I wilt like a lettuce leaf on a hot grill in the heat and the cold makes me crave creature comforts I don't have. Today, the sky was crayon-blue, there was an occasional cloud and the sun was getting in some early practice for August. The wind was cold, but very light. It was the sort of day where I could wear jeans, a t-shirt and a jumper, and tie the jumper around my waist if I got too hot. It was my sort of day. It's just a complicated series of events coming together in a particular way, and it they just happened to come together on my birthday. There's no real reason for it.

I realised that at some point. It's a special day because the weather is lovely and my friends and I are working in our garden. The next time the weather is beautiful and I'm happy to be where I am, I can have that same warm sunburst of realisation: There's no reason for it, it's just happened. The universe hands us moments without telling us sometimes, and if you're too busy looking for them you'll miss them. As the hippies used to say, 'be here now'. I think that's the lesson for my twenty-ninth year.

My SO brought me a shamanic drum. She played it for me so I could meet the drum's spirit. I'll admit I felt horrifically self-conscious, even though there was just her and me. I mean, a drum's spirit? It's all a bit, you know... BBC 2. The spirit I met was a blackbird. According to some reading I've done, the blackbird leads us through change and helps us realise a creative and spiritual awakening. It's also a very shy spirit who feels self-conscious in groups. If we have patience with each other, I think we're going to get on well.

Ngaio brought me a stack of books and I have a cheque from an aunt who thought I was a year older. The cheque is going to be spending money for the next few months, and the books are going to be some new herbs for the casserole of my mind. The best thing about other people buying you books is that you'd probably never read them otherwise. It's like finding a new coloured pencil in a set you've been using for years.

I've also written a short bio for Concept Sci-Fi. For the record, I hate writing bios and I don't photograph well. Accepting these things and saying, 'oh, sod it then' can be liberating at times.