Late November 2003 I’m losing weight again. I’m ‘winning’ though, I tell myself. I’m successfully skirting the impurity of life. Regulating food intake, regulating exercise, regulated hard work and regulated social interactions. “Never get too close” from where the flesh would expose its foolish core, and be tainted in another’s eyes in tones one doesn’tContinue reading “I stare at bus stops, and it brings me home.”
Category Archives: I stare at bus stops and it brings me home
Uncountable train journeys to Nowhere
The existential predicament of trying to get somewhere but never getting anywhere defines my adult life, but, by extension, my inability to actually arrive in adulthood. It’s a small story, based on a small measure of freedom to act in ways that I deemed would get me there, against a background of big big stories;Continue reading “Uncountable train journeys to Nowhere”
What to do? In this city, in this world
Edited version of text originally posted in Autumn 2016. I got the express train across the pennines. I’ve always wanted to reach the Metropolis on the other side, only to repeatedly realise it’s no lost world, no place where things are done differently, after all. “What spurs me on to travel to other towns andContinue reading “What to do? In this city, in this world”
20 year of coffees and Train tickets to nowhere in particular
“If only this next journey unveils something.” Chasing the idea. An idea that The idea might finally manifest itself. Chasing it for 20 years. The infamous accusation aimed at Millennials is that they can’t afford their own homes because they spend all their money on avocado on toast – a distorted presentation of reality, so to ignoreContinue reading “20 year of coffees and Train tickets to nowhere in particular”
Neither here nor there – somewhere only fleeting.
I stand at the railway station anxiously tensing my stomach to look as flat as possible, arms tight and reluctant to leave their position next to my rib cage. It’s all so familiar, countless adulthood hours stranded in discontent at nearby transport terminals, waiting to be delivered from this daily dis-ease. A kind of inertia,Continue reading “Neither here nor there – somewhere only fleeting.”
In praise of service stations
You side-step yourself here, becoming a spectral spectator – observing with no fixed identity abode. It isn’t just a physical hinterland, but a psychological hinterland: in-between the inner turmoil. Shelter from the digital rain of micro-instructions that bodysnatch our mouths; muttering a thousand million choices of direction – commands to constantly become more, to doContinue reading “In praise of service stations”
Meditations on escape
I took these photos over 10 years ago, in inefficient pumps my feet could no longer tolerate – trying, in a repeated fashion, to see how far I could walk it to the horizon on ‘the tops’. Today I’m up there, on the top, walking the very boggy old Yorkshire/Cheshire border, up to ‘Dead EndContinue reading “Meditations on escape”
‘My Frontier’
. If I could almost remain entirely still, like one of the rare monoliths in this landscape, I may finally find myself moving. I was in a state of static panic – the plea for an airlift out of an embodiment had become frenzied. “Down there” the onslaught of micro-instructions just got too intense. AndContinue reading “‘My Frontier’”
Out of time/into time
On the first day of trying to make the ascent I didn’t even get out of the car. But there was enough time to stare out the window at the towering blackened slopes of Longdendale. to somehow see my life reflected. A story lyrically chaptered by this ascent – through the leafy foothills, the barrenContinue reading “Out of time/into time”
Escaping the weekend carnage
My experience of Mental illness has been of being stuck in a space with your own thoughts about yourself, self-consumed thoughts, swirling around and around with fluctuating ferocity. The words ‘self-consumed’ will likely produce little sympathy, yet all of my writings, all of my doings have been saying one thing, ‘help, I want to escape this’, overContinue reading “Escaping the weekend carnage”
John B Ledger 