You'd think I'd have more sense than to put this all online, but I have the strongest urge to do a post with simply a tag-cloud of each and every single fear, anxiety, nervous niggle and downright terror that I've ever imagined or experienced.
Every single one I can think of.
Would it be insanely unwise to put all that out there?

Bruce Springsteen - Tougher Than The Rest

I am currently obsessed with this song.

Appropos Nothing

When I was ten, or perhaps eleven, I found a little plaque made out of clay or porcelain or something like that, perhaps five or six inches across, painted brown, behind some books on the bookshelf in my old bedroom. In the years and years and years that I lived in that old bedroom, I have collected so many memories of seemingly little consequence: the sight of a curtain in the wind. The stickers on my dressing table mirror. My dark red velvet jewellery box. Hundreds and hundreds of images that float around in my mind. But the completely accidental discovery of that little brown plaque stands out amongst all the rest as a completely transformative, miraculous moment. I don't remember anything - whether it was morning or afternoon, what I was searching for behind those books anyway, who the plaque belonged to or how it got there. Almost from the outside of myself, I can 'see' myself standing in the centre of the room, perfectly still, staring down at the words on it: "FEAR NOT. ONLY BELIEVE."
I have always considered myself a very fearful person. Nervous, anxious, highly-strung, sometimes even paranoid. But I maintain, absolutely, that from the moment I first saw that plaque (and subsequently placed it on the front of the bookshelf), I found what I need to achieve.

Words are superficial. I never interpreted 'Believe' as a slavish kind of devotion to any idealogy, imagined future comfort, any doctrine. I can't define it. But I'm trying to discover what it means to me. 'Fear Not' is by contrast utterly clear: As a dictum, an instruction for how to live, there's no interpretation possible (for me) except the most basic: Banish All Fear. I have diary upon diary, piles of papers, Facebook notes, letters to my mother, emails to friends, documenting all the little bits and pieces of my internal landscape and how it is evolving (or not). Underneath and above each and every one of these is a shadow of that first moment when something led me to find that plaque and the instruction printed on it.
The plaque did not say how to do it, or why it is was necessary.
My whole life so far has been about finding out: from the tiniest and most superficial struggle (going downstairs in the dark without trembling), to the most (seemingly) insurmountable (how to face imagined future loss, how to love but still be free, how to not panic about tomorrow or the day after but still prepare for them). This little instruction sowed a seed which is growing and growing and growing.
I am no closer to the answer or the art as when I first began. But I am closer to being able to think about it clearly (not evidenced by my writing, I know).

Dreamers - Jack Savoretti

A man I know wished to be a fighter pilot. He took flying lessons straight after medical school and wanted to get into the airforce. He learnt to fly. In between flying lessons and slogging it out at the hospital as the new young resident, he met an exceptional young woman. He fell more and more in love with her every day, but didn't know where it would lead, or even if she felt the same way.
The day before his flying exam when he was to finally earn his wings, she invited him to be her date at her brother's wedding. She told him she loved him too. He woke up the next morning and drove straight to her house to join her for the day - and ever after. And his flying instructor never heard from him again. He never told my mother what he had missed that day, and he only told me years and years later.
That one second's worth of 'I love you too', over some old phone line in my grandmother's house, and that tremendous leap of faith that only my father could have made, had made my life possible. It made my sister's life possible. It brought us into the lives of our friends and families. And it saved the lives of all those lives who were saved by my father's hands. And therefore brought happiness and grace to the lives of their friends, and families. And so on, rippling ever outward.
I think about that off and on, and feel all the strength, and all the fragility, of the things which make up destinies. And a lot, a lot, a lot, of love and gratitude.

I am like one those screaming children you roll your eyes at in supermarkets.

When I was a child, I was one of those children. I wanted something I couldn't have. I worked myself into a passion in under five seconds. I screamed till my chest hurt. I kicked whoever tried to restrain me. I yelled from my soul upwards. I beat at closed shop doors with my tiny little fists and yelled at walls.

I am still doing it.

Sometimes I think about old loves - and one in particular - and wonder why I cannot learn a simple lesson: Shit Happens, Move On.

I never stop asking why-how-why-why-why-how-why. Even after I've reached an answer to those questions a long, long time ago.
I never stop wanting to go back and try again (even when I don't actually want to try again. If it worked, I'd still want to leave. A piece of profound, paradoxical nonsense that I would caution you against trying to decipher.)
I never stop feeling that strange pull in the depths of my chest that makes me make that half-smile-half-sad face that other people always label Bittersweet, and which to me feels only bitter, never sweet, not even a little bit.
Worst of all: I never want to stop being friends. Stop having a connection. And the thought that some (and one in particular) seems to want this - is killing.
If he was online on gtalk right now, I would probably not say a word.
But the fact that he never is. That is killing.

I just want too much.
All the time.
From everyone.

Bloody Hell.

I am.
We are.

Without the first, the second can never be.
With the first, the second can never become.

Whoever designed relationships, hearts, heartlessness and romantic love up in heaven (or further south - much further south) - could you please release Version 2.0 (with the same man, of course)?
Many thanks.

Michael Bolton - Said I loved you but I lied

Angst, bleeding hearts, wide open arms and completely unfettered, mad emotion.
I miss the 80s.