Living in Limbo
and the three quotes of life that haunt me.
and the three quotes of life that haunt me.
Act One — A lost Salvadorian in Spain
“You’ll die a sad and lonely man” and quite why I continued to date that bundle of Irish fire is perhaps one of my life’s mysteries best left unanswered. We were perfectly imperfect for each other meeting at exactly the most imperfect of times, and a bitingly cold November night when all was rather strangely quiet on a night reserved for the loudest and brightest of celebrations to a man who failed to blow up the Houses of Parliament four centuries ago. Quite sobering when you come to think about it, not the viciously delivered right hook to the soul that was the sad and lonely man comment, more the fact that for over four centuries now we’ve been prescribed a diet of celebrating failure. Was this the first example of disaster capitalism in action? The creation of myths and stories for the ages? Another entry into our “calendated lives” (copyright and patent pending) or the continuation of the psychological operation foisted upon a still largely unaware public from their collective births, of celebrating vacuity, mediocrity and failure as the daily drip, drip, drip of dread, fear and anxiety is combined with the tick, tick, ticking of your own individual mortality?
That kind of existentially twisted question is one of the reasons that Irish firebrand with the saddest of smiles truly and utterly loved me, really loved me, until I rather quickly forced her to hate me. Passionately. I should therefore be able to celebrate this failure surely? (please stop calling me Shirley! Editor). Another failure along a road paved with them. I get three months and one argument (one!) before the pennies fall from the eyes of the rotting corpse of yet another failed relationship, and another failure not celebrated.
Act Two — The Maltese Falcon
“You can take the boy out of the council flat” she thundered with her throatiest and haughtiest of laughs, “but you’ll never take the council flat out of the boy!”. You may very well have your own particular twist on this caustic assertion or for the luckily uninitiated: it means wherever you go or whatever you do, you’ll still be that same scrawny stowaway from where you came. It’s a brilliant put down or in this case, a fucking awesome verbal slap in the face delivered with the devilry I loved! But make no mistake, the Falcon was making a point: I was an arsehole, I’ll always be an arsehole and whatever grandiose dreams and designs I may or now, may not, have on my life, I’ll still be that scrawny kid from a council flat. She probably delivered this put down in the house we shared and the house we bought together on that sunshine filled day as we sat squeezing each others hands under the table of the bank as our hands turned a worrying shade of blue.
This was it! We were really doing this! And we did.
And a placed called “Anfield” was our little home.
The Falcon was right of course, as she was on so many things concerning the young man who idolised her before smashing her heart into tiny pieces. The long telephone calls and the long weekends are a distant memory now and I hope the Falcon has taken flight and continues to soar mightily through this world.
Act Three — Scotland’s Flower
“When will somebody love me?” she cried, leaving a smudge of black mascara on a favourite Radiohead t-shirt that was already worn to death at this point and remains to this day a worn and torn unwearable shirt held close to my heart. Wearing a Radiohead t-shirt is nothing new for me but it’s still as incredibly apt as my hearing this soul destroying question from a person in the middle of a heartbreak that I inflicted.
That first night playing pool.
Those games of Scrabble in the baking heat of the finest Summer sunshine.
Our son.
Those holidays.
Those memories.
That Christmas Day exactly two decades ago when a knee was taken in the very middle of a bridge in a toytown, and the answer to a question that made me the happiest man in the world.
All of the three quotes above are as true today as the days and times they were originally said. There’s also a lot of anger and sadness as well as a spiteful (if amusing) jibe to go with this truth, ancient or modern. For modern it certainly is. My current response and naturally the worst quote to take from this distinctly average article is “I don’t want to infect anyone with my sadness” and how horrifically sad is that? I’ve been sad for over three decades of my life and I can’t continue with my life like this. I also can’t write articles such as these with half baked ideas but then again, no-one reads any of my writings anyway and why do I keep deluding myself that one day, that bright shining fucking day, that someone, anyone, will see the writer that lurks inside of me? Why?
Well disaster capitalism came knocking at my door at 9.20am yesterday with a ghost of a debt not of my making of nine years ago, and trying to speak any kind of rational sense to my local Council or the “Energy Company” only serves to remind me that life is a circle, a wheel within a wheel and an ever decreasing circle of repeating patterns and actions and consequences that lead me back to where I’ve been all along. Alone. Yet again I am defending actions against a rapacious wraith taking money for virtually nothing and getting their kicks for free. Simpletons who can’t see the truth for the unearned pound signs blinding them, a call centre operative reciting a script of doom as they play a piano recital on the keyboard of a misspent life.
The boy from the council flat will die a sad and lonely old man without being loved and I’ve just had enough of the waiting around. I have no reason to wake up. I have no reason for going to sleep. I write these words now with no real cogent thought as to how I’ll end this sentence or begin the next. What was the point to my writing of this article? Perhaps it was simply to stop myself from what I’ll resume doing after I’ve posted this article: walking slowly and gently around a house that isn’t my home and not knowing what the fuck to do with myself?
Limbo or purgatory. You can call your poison whatever you prefer.
Join a club they say, meet people, socialise and network.
I don’t want to infect them with my sadness I retort.