Legs

The right leg goes first. The left leg is usually two or three days late. Which is typical of my left leg: can’t even dissociate on time. The left has no sense of timing. Anti-rhythm, I call it. If I want to dance, I have to dance around it. Usually I don’t bother.

But anti-rhythm is the least of my leg troubles. When the dissociation comes, there is nowhere to hide. No escape from the alien feeling. Nowhere to run to – unless you take the legs with you. You want to get away from them, they want to get away from you. But you are inextricably linked. Like living in a failed marriage: dependency and resentment.

You know when it’s coming. One morning, you wake up with a taste of iron in your mouth. The taste of blood. You can feel your teeth, like they are bigger than they were yesterday. Maybe they itch. First day, you can wash away the taste with your first sip of tea. A few days in, nothing gets that taste out of your mouth. Then you know you’re headed for a falling out with your legs.

There will be environmental pressures too. You are dog tired, regardless of whether you work like a bitch or loaf like a couch hound. There will be stress, barely manageable. Suddenly you can’t open the mail or answer the phone. Maybe you have to lock yourself in the house, and double check the lock every couple of hours. Imprison yourself with those legs, the legs of a stranger.

Because the next thing that happens is, your legs dissociate. One after the other they change from being tired to being different. Not yours. Alien. It is a sick feeling. You want to run. You feel like they’ve got their own brain, and they are thinking, we want to run too. Away from you. If you walk, or run, the feeling subsides. You have to work together. Bipedal motion, balance, instinct – a million years of genetic imprinting. But pause, just pause for a moment, the conflict returns. Genetics count for nothing. Sit down, they rock and shake, tapping out out a manic rhythm to the beat of growing anxiety.

Maybe you’ll have to run forever. Until you drop. Run, Forrest, run!

So far, that hasn’t happened to me. A few days in, crushing tiredness, the taste of blood subsides, my legs reconcile. So far, I haven’t had to run and run and never stop. So far.

The Point of Friday

Work hard. Be nice to people. That’s not mine – someone else put it out there. But it works for me.

The Point of Thursday

Sometimes the point is just to understand the point of someone else. But is that any easier than understanding yourself?

The Point of Wednesday

Saw a woman in Sheffield, making her way home with groceries. Content enough. Is the point just to get home?

The Point of Tuesday

What is the point? If I spend too long searching, the search becomes the point. The point of the search?

The Point of Monday

She said: Find the point of Monday. I didn’t. But maybe I found some joy. Singing along to The Cramps.

Rain

A council estate. An old mining town where the mines are still and the miners gone. Rain. I stop the car at a junction of two roads, letting the mother across in front of me. The houses are prefabricated. Tin houses, pastel green or yellow. Tin roofs, grey and shiny in the wet. The young woman in poor clothes, tracktop hood covering her head, a scruffy push-chair, a dirty child mewling in the drizzle. A damp cigarette. The wipers smear a film of oily water across the windscreen, and on the radio, news of murder and hate and the politic of the absurd.

The mother walks past the car and I think, what is the point of that woman’s existence? How does she carry on, what does she carry on for? She is so futile. Her life is so futile. Utterly without reason. In another dead town a man with a gun concludes much the same thing. Takes away life. Takes away futility. Who can blame him, what can you blame him for?

I look around this tin town in the rain. Battered cars on the street, a skip full of junk, a broken window, an abandoned tricycle on the green. Dogshit. A manicured garden, ornaments in a window, flower baskets at a brand new front door with brass numbers, brass letterbox, brass doorknob. Poverty and denial of poverty. Everywhere, futility. How do people hope, what do they hope for? What can they hope for?

I turn the key to stop the car. Apply the handbrake and look around me. Steering wheel with inset cruise control that once seemed exciting, a fragrant cardboard tree hanging from the rearview mirror. Empty paper coffee cup, phone charging device with green light blinking, radio. Poverty and denial of poverty. My passenger, confused, asking a question I don’t hear because all I can hear is the futility. Rain obliterates the view now the wipers aren’t going. I have stopped.

Small Demons

They talk to me. I talk to myself. I tell myself: Remember when you found out you had a nickname. Not an endearment or a celebration. Not a nickname you wanted or were supposed to know about. When you were fourteen. Remember that. I tell myself: Remember when you pretended you went blind if you looked down. Because you saw it on a western film on television, and you thought it was interesting. When you were five. Remember that. Small demons tormenting me at every crossroads where I took a wrong turn. Remember when someone’s dad collected his daughter from a party, and he gave you a lift, and he asked his daughter how it went, and you, sitting in the back seat, answered. Like he was asking you. Like it was your place to judge. Like he cared about you. When you made assumptions. When you were thirteen. Remember that.

Small demons, talking to me. Reminding me. I remind myself. I forget most things and I’ve lost so many memories. But not the little bad ones, the tiny regrets. They seem to stay. They collect, gather in the corners, cling to one another like house dust, fluff, and crumbs. Tiny, but messy. Unhygienic. Small dirty cultures growing diseases, readying to infect. Preparing to overrun. I tell myself: Remember when you sulked all day, for so long you forgot what you were sulking about, and your big brother was visiting. He tried to persuade you to come out of your room, and you wanted to because you loved him so, but you wouldn’t. And you didn’t know why. And then he left. When you were eight. Remember that.

For example: I was at this wedding. Not mine. Not even someone I knew. A friend of a friend. I don’t really know why I was there, and I hate weddings. I was feeling self-conscious. Old and useless and not part of it. Bloated and uncomfortable and not smart enough. So many tall people. So many perfumes in one room, so many expectations. So much affectation. I was keeping it together by counselling myself. Trying not to be noticed. Trying not to ask myself the question on everyone’s mind: who is he? Who am I?

I’m standing there, waiting for someone, trying not to be noticed, trying not to get involved. The photographer asks me, are you bored? I think, am I? Is that how I look? Is that what they think? And then I tell myself: Remember that time, (not now). Remember when your friend told you he was having a trial at a professional football club, and you thought he said both of you, and you told your parents, elated. (Stop this). And you weren’t. And it should’ve been obvious, really, if you’d thought about it. When you were eleven. Remember that. (Fuck it).

And then I’m dealing with the small demons again. At a wedding where I don’t belong. Trying to fake interest, trying to fake a purpose. Trying and failing to hold back the small demons, the tiny regrets.

For example: I was meeting this friend who I hadn’t seen for twenty years. The bounty of social networking. He booked a hotel, and emailed directions. I wondered what we would talk about. It had seemed like a good idea, a week before. And then I tell myself: Remember that time, (fuck. FUCK). Remember that time you ran out in the road from the school playground. Across the road without thinking, without stopping. You didn’t get hit by a car but you could’ve been killed. People were shouting at you. It was unbridled abandon. When you were six. Remember that. I tell myself: Remember the brown paper bag, at the bus stop, when you were fifteen. Remember that statement about self-esteem, to your wife, when you were thirty eight. Remember saying, I Love You. Remember that.

I didn’t go. I didn’t meet my old friend. Small demons overpowered me. The immune system doesn’t fight off little bad memories. You forget them. Or you get sick, and swamped with tiny regrets.

Writer’s Block

Writer’s Block: A screenplay about depression.

Rugged countryside, on the edge of woodland. Springtime.
Man sitting under tree. Holds notebook and pencil.

Close-Up:  Man puts pencil to paper. Seems frozen. Sweating.

Extreme Close-Up: Sweat on brow.
Extreme Close-Up: Pencil wobbles on blank page. Does not move. Man groans. Sound as of branch bending painfully. Lead snaps. Loud as a broken branch. Man exclaims as if injured.

Cut to: Flock of birds scatter from woods.

Therapy

Therapy: A screenplay about depression.

Psychiatrist’s well appointed room. Female therapist and forty-something male patient.

THERAPIST: So, in essence, it is all about your father, and your son

MAN: But that doesn’t explain my irrational fear of being sung to.

THERAPIST: Is that irrational?

MAN:  Have you ever come out in hives when someone looked you in the eye and sang the theme to Titanic?

THERAPIST: Celine Dion?

MAN: Yes.

THERAPIST: Yes.

MAN: Oh.