to be honest / feb 26

TO BE HONEST with you, i’m thinking about getting my head kicked in by a man with white jordans and a septum piercing

when my bike takes a moment to itself. It chooses to leave me clattering, a real weird woman and with her real weird hunk of metal meeting an invisible resistance, and letting contact between the pavement and the body come to. Here is the firmament, just be cool, and don’t over think it. Anyway, it’s strange, then it’s sore, then you’re off dusting your hand and, then, oh, yeah, no, all good, thank you for asking, sorry you had to see that, i’ll be okay though. Ha ha ha ha. Then it’s riding with a preciousness, as well as an immutable anxiety all the way home. Stopping underneath a bridge, I find somebody’s aunt with a Sainsbury’s shopping bag stood so still. She is not motionless - i must say it until i am breathless, there is life here - she is looking the way I came. I drink the questionable remains of the contents of my waterbottle. I take off my sweater, i try to smile at her, and ride with my arms out, hoping to catch the sun but not for warmth, just for the light. 

It’s february again, and I’m wheeling and dealing with an assortment of what history will forget to remember sorta problems. I’m in hysterics about sums. I’m trapped in cyberwigan, where Microsoft Teams is King. All you do is worry about this, ultimately and forever, being somebody else’s fault. I say out loud to the trees, where do you get off on thinking you’re some kinda expert in this? 

 I twirl my index finger around and around the contradictions, let them spool and unfold. My hair is getting thicker but I need to shower. My thighs are getting fat, yet my legs are getting skinnier. I need to lose weight, but I need to eat more. I spend all day sat at my desk and wait for the time to come. I’m shaving off the chaff as much as I can and being intentful with all of my decisions. We’re already running out of time for stalling - we’re getting there, we’re getting there, we’re getting there. LeGuin had some expected wisdom on the thought of writing on the internet. From Steering the Craft, ‘The mechanical ease and immediacy of electronic communication are deceptive. People write hurriedly, don’t reread what they wrote, misread and are misread […] it’s childish to assume people will understand unexpressed meanings. It’s dangerous to confuse self-expression with communication.’ 

It’s february again, which means it’s another month for beginning, again. Sure, alright, but how about this time, all actions are a measure of inhaling and exhaling. I walk down to the river that’s near now flooded and try my very hardest to breathe as best as I can, counting and all, but I’m already too known to the fact that I’m just breathing, and I can’t do it as good as I used to. The river doesn’t flood, but the water stays changed. I got the idea from a video from a writer I should know but whose name completely vacates me. She described it as something her father told her. I remind myself of this with two thirds of an inch of a needle pushed through - where are the angels that i have been waiting for? Brother, there’s a meter ticking up and i’m counting out my change. I’m sat on the curb with my head in my heads; not from failure; please don’t think of me as a failure; i’m just getting there at my own sorta speed. If there’s an easy way of doing it, i’m not interested. If there’s a right way of getting where i need to be, i don’t want to know it. This has come from a frenetic need to keep pressing the buttons to get the ratcheting feeling fucking expelled from the middle of my chest and i, for one moment, realise how much more work needs to get done before i’m anywhere near there. 

In other words, I want to be here. In other words, Let Me Have This Process, and I’ll get back to you when I can. To be honest with you, i’ve been doing better this month, but looking you in the eyes and saying it in a straightforward way makes me feel like I’m wasting your time. You want to see the work, and i’ve got two hands to show you. Used loosely, a colloquial deference to somewhere better than here. Here is my progress, I am the performer. Here is my smile, this is my costume. It’s It’s It’s It’s easier to write here because I want to write this, I want to keep a new habit that’s keeping me from a distracted sin. I take the words these angels tell me and I’m singing it from my conscious. 

Think of it like this, I spent February putting myself back into the world in a way I haven’t been in a long, long time. The no youtube thing is going fine but I started reading the guardian more than I needed to, replacing the infinite scroll with a less dignified journalistic go-over. Be fucking for real. My notepads have a few things that I’ll publish here in March, all being well. I’ve dropped the ball entirely with Mountain, Tower, the story about the hermitic fellow, and the other idea of going around to a friend of a friend’s house who buys all his own drugs. Yet, I’m noting a lot of shit down. I’ve applied for one conference of two but I’m confident I won’t get it. I’m trying to take my reading week off but there are sirenic emails, and moronic recipients. I’ve got one of those apps to minimise how I’m looking at my phone, and I’m invoking my friends to read Infinite Jest with me. I’m getting stupider, for sure, but the way in which I’m committing to it feels like I’m steering this Green Machine Vortex into my Uncle’s BMW of my own idiotic volition. You don’t need a helmet, you just need to have a good time. 

For the first time in a long while, I’m walking with both feet. I’m moving from the ball to the heel and I’m counting the breath as I take it. Wren and I discuss this on a walk, and It Is The First Warm Day of the year. There’s something boyish about my voice as I’m walking, as I describe to her in luxuriating detail how the clothes I wear intently direct energy down through my body. The sweater (hers) flattens my shoulders and brings them in enough, my arms bracketing my chest, caught together at the waist, where all lines point down to the earth, to my boots, to the motion. It’s not all like the writer says it is, you know. This has been a good month, yet her attention is occidentally drawn to its flaws, mechanics, words that she wants to use produce. It’s not always going to be like this with her, but one day, she’ll make a decision, and grow up just enough to get past it. Until then, I shout into anonymous trees,

where do you get off on saying shit like that ? do u get it now ?

There was a man in Lidl today, tall with circular glasses, not handsome but cute, and I think briefly about saying hi, tossing the coin, and ruining either one of our lives. I didn’t see his sneakers, and I didn’t check his septum. I feel like a pervert angel not to look at him again but I don’t mind, I’m doing my best impression of living, and it’s been warm today, and you could smell the willows, and the birds are singing past their bedtime. I’m not accusing myself of it all going a-okay. None of it’s easy, and the bike is squeaking something ugly, and I’m not reaching the success that nobody promised me, but, to be honest, I’m out of breath my the time I reach the top of the hill, and the sweat doesn’t feel like it’ll ever leave me, and there’s nowhere for me to shower. The bruise the fall gave me with isn’t going anywhere. These are the benefits of having a bike. 

Nearing home and sweating but not as much now, I’m lifting up the back wheel. I realise that the break’s been applied since I tipped over. It could have been annulled there since before The Clattering, but in some anonymous moment, the will’s been read out to me. She says, in uncertain terms, I don’t wanna do this shit. You’re not who you always were. I don’t want to be the machine you think I am. In my head, it’s become an unfixable dilemma. The wheel is slow and stuck, and will still be slow and unshifting when I exact any force against it. I think of the needle on sunday and exhaling - i haven’t figured it out yet, if it’s breathing in or out when the needle goes through the skin and touches something uncomfortable and then into a layer of muscle. I count to thirty. I feel the sweat on the back of my thigh. My breasts will hurt in the morning more than the needle does now. The angel tells me I’m going to live another day, and to get a blood test soon. 

Think of it like this, I’m playing for dead air by writing towards this goal of another installment of the monthly ‘you fucked up’ newsletter. I spend a Sunday making collage. I spend a week making a short creative writing course, rather than doing my job designing a creative writing short course. I have a go at unambitious and undifficult work in a coffee shop in the middle of a sunday. I find the people repulsive and I resent my own self-exclusion from the fellowship of men. I note my tendency to remove myself without good reason. I’m getting isolated and weird but I feel fine, doc. O’Brien checks in on my phone screen and tells me, ah, commander, and I chuckle at my own fucking work. I’m playing for dead air by writing this, rather than making the same account of my own time for The Actual Writing. So where does the shame lie on me then? When does it get better / what do i need to do to make it better / what do i need to do to get you to keep reading / make it better, just fucking make it better, / do you like the images / do they make you smile / did you learn anything / did it work for you / what do you think of me / guy who wears wigs on instagram reels playing the same character in an infinite loop of comical though crucially topical situations / stop watching football / do you think im cruel / do you think im good enough / am i a good friend / what would you do without me /stop making excuses / stop going to church / start eating better / follow truisms like they’re your father / join late / leave early / become whole and examine the gaps with great interest / the river is the horse and you are the water / repeat the love you had for yourself just to tide you over / invest early and sell late / imagine the cat clawing at your brains / imagine the station entirely alone / twirl the finger /imagine it easy / stop overthinking / start over again /

There is no rhyme nor reason for what’s going on here. There’s just no excuse.