Stephen Fry

"But do they bubble and froth and slobber 

and cream with joy 

at language?"

I am not alone in my admiration for Stephen Fry. And this brilliant diatribe is yet one more reason why. Yes, it is a bit long-winded, but so is he... and so is the nature of his argument. Often, sadly, I think the love of language is dead, and most who use it have no idea of its potential.

People who talk and write like Stephen Fry probably sound absurd to some, like walking antiques. But I don't care. I love it. 

The Things About Me

Lately, I've come to truly abhor the relationship I have with the things about me. The treasures and junk that have magnetized themselves to me over time swirl about my room like some kind of nest. I abhor their presence, their quantity and the petty attachments that I have for them. Pictures, ornaments, fabrics, books, seashells and house plants, heirlooms and old furniture.

Aging does this, bestows things upon us. Souvenirs of the years. Yet when it's time to move, they become dead weight. 'Oh, I cannot leave this behind!" "And what about this? I cannot get rid of it!" The familiar refrain is a psychological bore.

Me at age nine, having tea time with my grandmother.

My grandmother lived in the same house in Birmingham for nearly 40 years. She was a sophisticated Southern woman who loved art and music, and had traveled all over Europe. Consequently, her home was a virtual museum. I admired her grand nest and grew up within it. It was my solitary playground: endless books of literature and art, paintings, musical instruments and a myriad of elegant items to pour over. I dreamt one day of inheriting her style, her ability to collect and hoard beautiful things. I imagined myself, a sophisticated old man puttering about within his own gilded, ornately cluttered cage, admiring his baubles silently and proudly.

But when she died and her museum had to be disassembled, it became a maddening store of dusty loadstones, a seemingly endless pile to sort through and assess worth upon. The desire to shamelessly covet was immediately paired with the impulse to distain and wantonly discard. "This belonged to her, and she loved it, so I must keep it!" "Oh, how this makes me think of her, of my childhood, and so I must keep it!" Along with, "My God, SHE HAD SO MUCH STUFF! Get rid of it ALL!" Again, a tremendous bore. The endeavor lasted days and was a mental nightmare I swore never to repeat.

My room 32 years later, the same tea trolley beneath the window. 

Now, fully ensconced in middle age, I fight my things and my hoarding habits. The comfort of nice things and a pretty home continually contest the Buddhist shame they instill in me. The weight they place upon me and the drag they create have become debilitating anathemas. Yet each morning I sit in my bed, like some dandy Oscar Wilde, with coffee in hand and look about my pretty sarcophagus and am temporarily dazzled and hypnotized, and in some temporary way am pleased.

One solution to all this gyration is travel. During my periodic jaunts, I have found that I am most happy and content in hotel rooms and guest houses. Their sterility and simplicity immediately have me sighing with relief. To have only a bed, a dresser and a closet, a bathroom (even if it's down the hall), and my single bag of essentials, and to know that none of these things even belong to me or really even matter, is so pleasantly liberating. At these times, remarkably, I never find myself wishing for more.

I should learn from this, as it is surely one of the great lessons of travel. It is the ideal that I should strive towards. But its a journey worthy of Sisyphus: always two steps forward, then one backward.  

If At All

The curtains open and another day begins.

Up go the blinds, down go the feet, and the treadmill is presented.

Step upon it willingly, resignedly, fatally.

On go the haunting hours, speaking to none but strangers, if at all.

Muffling the internal shrieking, stifling the wooden cracking and splintering of a breaking heart,

Until a silent shell remains.

The images, the smells, the noise, the stupid audiences and stupid performers.

A bar, a film, a bit of TV, tasteless nourishment.

Sleep, if at all.

What is IT?

I’m losing it.

So much time has passed in this northern town that I’m losing it.

What is IT? Well, I’ll tell you. It’s that spark. That hit. That rush of warm sunlight on a beach lined with palms and a cozy feeling on your flesh when some warm lover is leaning against you, and all you got is the breeze, the salt air, the sun, and warm sand beneath you.

It’s a religion. An ambiance that is my Avalon. 

I sit in these dark rooms with a beer or some drink, and fall into a gauzy tone. A quicksand of longing. And I think, are these the symptoms of amnesia? You get that one taste, and you know where it first dropped on your tongue, but like a Hollywood tragedy you spend too much of the story trying to get back to that ideal, while this or that obstacle stymies your path, instead of just sticking with it in the first place.  

When I really think about it, I’m quite certain somewhere deep inside I feel I don’t deserve this victory, this attainment… that I’m working off some martyr karma. Yet if I bide my time long enough, ye ole Grim Reaper will have his way sho’ nuff! And ma’ purdy tears won’t wet a thang! Pull the sheet over my face and strike up the old Hammond. 

The beauty, the saving grace, of being a far-flung cocksucker that is so out of place on this joint of dirt, is that a revolution of continuous affairs, trysts and ensemble heart-renderings in a tropical clime is all I could ever ask for in my remaining years. I don’t give a royal damn about true love, ever-lasting love, “my love is your love”, but only the love that exists at one moment in time, neither past nor future. 

As Whitman moved amongst the sleepers, I shall move amongst the lithe brown figurines of equatorial jive and forever swim in the mist of their lanky dark hair, their kinky juice hung studs and luscious suicide-worthy lips, their bouncy gait, and the clarity of their eyes. I will hold each one as a child. But love each one as a man. 

Vicious Dichotomy

This vicious dichotomy that I carry with me these days is the prequel to some grand crack-up, I'm sure. I can feel it mounting daily. How did I get here? Why is this dilemma so profound and continuously present?

It's certainly an adult conundrum: knowing what one once loved, and was drawn to, but could not have... yet now fully capable of possessing but not having the nerve to pursue it... being a coward and worrier in the face of potential acquisition.

Holding onto a dream for so many years is exhausting. But, after a time, it becomes a habit. And then it becomes an aspect of one's personality. Yearning becomes one's raison d'être. Achievement is somehow an after-thought.

I've dreamed for nearly a full decade to return to Thailand and make it my home. After living there for two years, then visiting several times for extensive periods, I've been nearly certain in my heart that I wanted to live there once again.

Yet now, with quite enough money, and stability, and far more practical-mindednes than I did when I was in my early 30's, I am lazy, doubtful, and somehow feeling I hardly deserve such a serious stab at happiness.

Yet I'm not dead yet. I have so much more life to live.

How did I get to this place?

It's like I would prefer the comfy blanket and opiate of familiarity and routine to the zest and serendipity of adventure.

The Story of My Life

LOOK AT THIS EVERY DAY!

"Man sacrifices his health in order to make money. 

Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health.

And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present;

the result being that he does not live in the present or the future;

he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived."

His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama

All Things Must Pass

All things must pass. 

Yet sometimes they are most amazing in their final stages of descent. They are the rare things that acquire new meaning or new beauty in their demise. 

Sadly, this does not hold true for the edifice of living beings. As humans, we all crumble into hideous disarray. Almost as soon as we are formed in adolescence we begin to disintegrate. By mid age it is a comedy of denial that keeps us from hiding in the shadows. No one gazes inspired upon the forms of the elderly. 

But for the antiqued thing, somehow, beauty shifts and is augmented as it ages, the original voice is changed and made louder. A tarnish, or even an overt flaw can transform a prior ornament into accidental high art. 

I suppose we love the thing, revere it, because time penetrates it more elegantly, affects it more softly, and it is why we keep the thing around us, treasure it. To make us feel better (or to forget) about ourselves.