Monthly Archives: June 2009

a day in the life

26/10/08

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“Getting away with murder in the house of the devil is no great feat.”

It wasn’t always like this.  Worries about safety of children has something to do with age, maturity, intellectual discourse on the dangers of too many weirdos with too readily available sicko pornography, but mostly to do with having children.  Yes, the having children bit definitely brings on the protecting children feelings, along with the fear of them getting hurt in ways you cannot always protect them from.

It also helps to be a single parent.

I sit here, Sunday night, 22.32, just past 10.30 in the evening, tired, with my iron ticking hot behind my left should, my back aching, the dog bringing his meal into the living room to eat at his leisure by his dog bed one morsel at a time, feeling slightly nauseous and wondering where all the time goes.

I am a single parent.  Although not the be-all and end-all of me, it is definitely a defining feature.  I wonder what I would be without a child?  I’d just be me, but childless.  I had plenty of practice at that sort of lifestyle.  I had got morosely good at having a bad go at my own life, until this fatherhood malarkey kicked off.  Now I am happily ensconced in the roll of ‘good father’, which is what my friends all call me.  Even my first au pair comes back telling me that she explained to her own father that she has a second father in England (me).  She comes back once in a while to visit and hang out, run and play with my daughter and generally catch up on life in her second home.  In fact, I’ve just dropped her at the airport.  Stansted.  From which I’ve just driven home.  It took me over two hours.  My au pair left by plane after I drove away from the airport, and landed in Germany (from the UK) before I opened my car door at home.  That is how absolutely diabolical the traffic can be coming home on Sunday night on the M25.

So I’m trafficked, driven, cooked, cleaned, sweeted, shintzeled, vacuumed, swept, mopped out.  I’m soon to be ironed and movied out (just waiting to turn Wanted back on – Angelina Jolie where are you when I need you?  Why can’t those gorgeous eyes stare lovingly into mine?  Ok…I know why – I’m not Brad Pitt or Billy Bob Thornton, but I’m much younger than both…and would be happy to stay at home taking care of her seven kids while she went out and earned all the dosh!)

Might even have some time to write that killer novel I’ve been working on.

I’ve started it a few times, in different guises.  Many short stories and poetry and a children’s book and an unpublished novel or two later, I’ve still as yet to find my stride; my Ulysses.  Maybe if I was married to Angelina Jolie, living in a big house with no money worries, taking care of my daughter and her other children, writing when I could and generally enjoying life, I could write my pullitzer or nobel prize winning novel.  Who knows?  Anything could happen.  (And my dog would be REALLY happy with a bigger house to run around – so many corners to pee in! )

Hot iron ticking on the ironing board to my left reminds me that I’ve still got work to do, and it’s now quarter to eleven.  My back is aching (less than after that damn fool basketball game – who the hell am I fooling – I’m totalled at 32, a physical wreck even as I lose weight and run to make myself feel better.  And if my recently departed au pair is to be believed, finally in a state to be attractive to other women; chance’d be a fine thing! ), my athletes foot is now catching up with the second toe on my left foot and I’m feeling really crappy after all that ice cream and sweets I scoffed earlier while watching Angelina Jolie school some young whipper snapper of an actor into shape – lucky sod even gets to kiss her!   (Dunno if I could handle that…um…yes, I think I could actually… )

Anyway, this is me signing off.  Not cause I don’t have anything to say, as I do, plenty even.  Just cause there’s too much to do to be sitting here blathering on about nothing much at all when there’s work to be done.

Here’s to my long lost mate, for whose whinging I coined the phrase (much to his dismay), “You’re life sucks, I’d hate to be you.”

Another day in the life of…

a single father

Poems

Even Flow

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This is how it is, in life, in me
With all that I am and was, all that I will ever be
This is me.

Flowing like a sly snake slithering slowly sideways
Hot sand not touching skin but instead moving aside
For the slickness of my life to leave a telltale s-shaped jagged wound
In the land that I walk, forever doomed by those prophetic words,
“You’ll be a real heart breaker some day,” who knew
The heart that I would break time and again would be
Mine.

No masochist,
Me
Just broken, ever so slightly
You see
This is not the beginning or the end
For life does not work like a movie
Pat top and bottom, clear middle and run-up
Exercise some common sense and realise
That the reality of life is a constant, ever open ‘o’
Of amazing change, amazement itself just another way of saying
‘oops, i did it again’

So this is where i sit now,
Having ‘oopsed’ one time more
This time no more an oops than ever before
But it could be the last one to be made with eyes shut
If I am to make more, they will have to be consciously on purpose
Meaningfully all the more painful for their directed aim
To make me more than I am, once more again,
To turn this sad sourpuss of a future-prefect child
Into the man he needs to be to see this life to its fruitful end
Another aim, this time too high, maybe, but all the same
An aim to me to be what I need for my life to be complete
To be completely happy and comfortable, or at least comfortably happy

Which is one and the same, isn’t it?

So this is my manifesto, that all children come first
That I will make my greatest effort to live by the creed
The creed that is burned in God-like mile-high flaming letters in the darkest corners of my soul
I must “Hurt as few people as little as possible,” and
“Help as many people as much as possible,” for this is life distilled,
Is it not? To be able to say, “I did it my way, and my way hurt so little, and helped so much,
So it must be the right way, for me, at least” and maybe to end it with
“Don’t you see this is as true as mathematical formulae?”
Only to watch others nod sagely, never to know if they agree because you are right
Correct, even, but rather that you are nice, a good soul
And they would not want to let you down on your deathbed.

Saying this before then would be presumptive and arrogant,
Even that they may lie to you to make the last moments all the more meaningful
All the less painful, but you do not need to ask them
For if you do not know, in your heart of hearts
That you have lived your life by your own manifesto
To its fullest extent, the end of the meaning of life,
Your life, will have become something less than what it could have been
And at the end, this is all that will have mattered, you will see.

To be able to look into the eyes of yourself dying
Years from now, and say, “I plan on getting their well,
And dying better” is the most difficult promise we can make, ever
But we owe it to ourselves, don’t we?
To be good is easy, to be really good is easier
But to be Good and Real is the most difficult edge to take in life
The tight rope of sanity and depression, of energy and loss
To always make the right choice because it is the right choice
Not because anyone is watching, or because it suits me
Because some karmic bean counter is watching everything I do
Or because some all-seeing creator is watching my every breath
Or because some all-knowing lord has said it must be so
But because I choose to be that way, knowing full well
That I could be else, have it in me to be the worst of life’s wretched
Creatures, but choose instead to slave away at a life harder to reach
The comfort not given but taken one step at a time, one tear at a time
One slice at a time, one second at a time
One moment in time, and that is all.

each moment counts, make it count, or die trying.

There is nothing more pure than this.

Poems

Love

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So what is love, she asks,
As if there is an answer
What is love,
To you, is what she means,
So I tell her –

Love is the only thing you can give away
And receive back more, the more you give,
Love is caring about someone else’s happiness
More than your own, wishing them well
Even if it poisons your soul to watch them smile
The green demon of envy reminding you that you are not only human,
But partially, at least partially, ugly inside, like all the rest.

Love is what you do when you have nowhere else to go,
No tree to hide behind, no road to run down, nowhere to escape.

Love is what you do when all else is lost,
And you realise that time itself is a mystery,
Not flowing forwards and backwards through space
With you in tow, like you were trained to believe
All those years ago, in school, through life, in memory
You realise life and time are intertwined
As is love, the memory found of some lost scent
Some distant song, come back to haunt you
From somewhere deep down, a place you thought you lost, for once
For ever, never to find, but in love, now
As you once were.

I could explain all of this, but stick to banalities,
For banalities are all I can think of, as love
Coursing through my veins takes my head and spins it round
Rises my gut and the pulse that comes from within
Spits in my face the steam of lost thoughts and broken dreams
And reminds me that, once again, I am no more
No less
Than everyone else.

Poems

memory’s burn

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I received a call today
Not for me
But for my soul on legs.

She smiled when she heard the long lost voice
It was the missing, one day out, wishing her a
Happy Birthday from afar.

My heart broke again.

This is like a test, a test of me
Of the lengths I can stretch to
The distance I can bend, before I break.

I can feel that familiar ache again,
Another sorrow marked on the walls of my soul-cell
Deep in the gut where I was born, inside of me.

This happens again and again,
Even knowing that I should be focused elsewhere
On the Workshop notes I sketch, now hidden behind this document.

But I lost focus, because my heart broke again,
Only
Softer this time, somewhere in the background.

There are true loves and
Loves that are true, then there are
True lovers, but that’s a kettle of a different colour.

Today I was reminded of all three, by that phone call
That phone call that was not for me, but
My soul on legs.

Today my heart broke again, in the quiet of the background of this thing that is me.

Poems

The Paperclip at the end of the Rainbow

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There is a journey to be taken, if you step inside the rainbow.
All of the colours of the universe will rain down inside of you,
Leaving you wanting only to know, what is at the other side
Of the rainbow? Well, I will tell you now, for I have seen
I have journeyed from here to there, and everywhere
In between.

The rainbow’s colours are not refracted light,
As the scientists tell us, I know that is just not right.
I have been inside the rainbow, seen the light fantastic
And realised it is nothing more or less
Than the emotion of love, refracted.

And what holds this emotion of love, in great arching curves
Across the sky? I will tell you now, so that you know why
I say that it must be love that holds us all together
The earth, the sky, the moon, the stars,
For it is ours and ours alone to wonder
Who and what and where we are.

So this love, flapping loosely through this universe
Of ours, wandering desolately amongst the cold vacuum
Of stars, has but one wish, to make us happy, not just us here
On earth, but everywhere there is an ‘us’, in every time, in every space
In every parallel universe-like-place. This is what love is,
An action, as compassion is active caring
So love is active life, and rainbows
Are acts of love.

That is why we look up and smile and share,
Telling total strangers, look, look up there,
It’s a sparkling, shining sign of love, for one and all of us
In the sky above, look, see, can’t you tell? And we know
That this is special, deep down, all of us, because it is
The true sign of love, the one single power that exists
In the world and universe around us. All else fails to understand
You cannot overestimate, the power that this one true force has
Is all there is holding us, down to atomic level, in one place
We are stars, once cold and distant, with love searching forlornly
For something to hold and warm, hug and feel,
Now we are here, not alone, not distant, not cold in our fiery embrace
But warm human beings, one people, one life, one earth, one place.

Love brought us together, from distant stars,
Dust of the past, the future is ours, so remember now
What I have said before, the rainbow is love’s promise
That forever more, we can live in happiness, together forever
If we only learn to love each other.

And what holds the rainbow, to the ground?
What was it, that I found
On the other side of my rainbow swim?
Come closer now, I’ll let you in
On my little secret, I know what’s there
No pot of gold, or carrot-topped hair,
No leprechaun , nor fairy sprite,
No lost children, nor Pegasus’ flight,
Instead I found, come closer here,
Let me whisper it quietly, in your ear
It was nothing more than a paperclip
Holding earth to love
And love to it.

So the next time you think of pulling hard,
On the love you feel, don’t
It’s a mistake. Love is something you cannot break
But you can lose it, it will float away,
If you pull too hard, come what may
That paperclip will disentach
And rainbow all will disappear
Up into the sky, for another year
Or a million more, til we get it right.

When you see a rainbow now,
Remember what I have said, that this is not a game to play
In or out of your head. This is no sweet savoury bliss
But the most deadliest serious stories, this
That the only power you will ever have
Is to love each other with all you are
And realise that this is true
The only reason there is a ‘you’
Is because Love’s force was wandering through the stars
Wanting some focus for love’s test
Saw the stardust floating by
And now you know the rest.