Look after yourself over the next 3 weeks of Xmas Grim. In this post-covid quagmire of futureless hyperbole, ones inner void can be tested to the limit as the volume is set to 12, as we realise the smell of ammonia will never lead to its necessary post-mortem, but to the next zombie goosestep toContinue reading “Fellow comrades – meaning me”
Category Archives: Writing
A Lifetime’s Worth of Staring at Train Announcement Boards
[Edited post originally from New Years’ 2016] A morning I had a dream last night. I can’t even remember what it was about, but to be honest the fact I know I had a dream is rare enough. Once more, from I how felt upon waking, it wasn’t a bad dream, it was a dreamContinue reading “A Lifetime’s Worth of Staring at Train Announcement Boards”
The failure of ‘the politicisation of mental health’
I admit it surprised me recently to hear Keir Starmer speak about the ‘collective trauma’ of the recent decade, and of a society of people who no longer feel like they have a future’. I know that nothing coming from the mouth piece for a mere electioneering PR exercise should surprise me. But I wasn’tContinue reading “The failure of ‘the politicisation of mental health’”
A life through walking
Neither the crucial role walking has had in my adult life, nor my acute psychogeographical knowledge of a certain clump of land in Northern England are things I instantly associate with pride and personal qualities. None of my walking has ever required metal sticks, flasks or waterproofs, the kind of walking you organise beforehand, norContinue reading “A life through walking”
The land that noise forgot (edit of 2016 text)
As I begin my ascent up to the tops, I try to break free of my cyclical doings on the foothills, too close to the claustrophobic wrapping of the weekend – an intense atmosphere where I exercise the very best and worst in me. New depths of contempt and idealist manifestos crisscross in my thoughts,Continue reading “The land that noise forgot (edit of 2016 text)”
Did spring 2020 even happen?
I sometimes make myself feel better, for about 10 seconds, by merely remaining in a thought exercise, where I am not in the daily grind. The mental picture that I have is of the early weeks of the 2020 lockdown. I was actually working. Because it was the lighter end of being an essential workerContinue reading “Did spring 2020 even happen?”
Between the dopamine scream and the dread-filled retreat
Dopamine dark highs that become fixtures. Weekend crashes that you see in advance. What can you do this time to satisfy the toxic pact of pleasure, self-destruction and shadowy-searching for humiliation? A long-held conviction concealed even from my sober self, that the connectivity and bonds that make life alive are impossible to attain. The moreContinue reading “Between the dopamine scream and the dread-filled retreat”
Arc
I’m glad to be back up here. I know the sentiment, and thus there need be no doubt over my convictions. I’m here as a stalker of exits; peering into this morose land, and trying to unveil and unravel the knots in our Geist. Knots in which we are all tied, condemned to be bothContinue reading “Arc”
I stare at bus stops, and it brings me home.
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.”
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”
John B Ledger 