Glistening reflection of consciousness

How beautiful mystery can be. I stepped out of my house into the night-drenched street and was surprised to find a drunk pissing on the wheel of a car on the opposite side of the road like a stray unkempt dog. He stared at me with empty eyes and a groggy indifference, fairly incomprehensible this state of affairs was for the both of us. Then all of a sudden I felt a strange affinity with the drunk as we both stood in the moonlight – he had dulled his sense of self in a downward transcendence of sorts, but his craving initially stemmed from the same elusive thing we both searched for - that escape from the incessant pain of this illusion of separateness we are habitually imprisoned by, terminally alienated from our true Selves. I silently wished him better luck in his quest, and went on my way.
As I made my travel up Grove road strange unfounded waves of paranoia rushed through me, and as each vehicle passed I felt I was about to become the victim of some random drive-by shooting, this sensation was so peculiar. I managed to curb this reaction (snigger) as the sight of the new public house up ahead soon calmed me. The grand Tudor building and the surrounding trees were incandescent with the eerie atomic-green of an anonymous floodlight and the moon directly above was phased at such an angle as to give the impression it was looking down at the scene in a leaning, animal inquisitive gaze. It was a picture of strange splendour, and I looked hard at the face of the moon and its eyes and mouth and sensed its amber complexion as if the sodium glare of these innumerable streets had tainted even its remote and cratered countenance. This image stuck with me all the way to Chris’s doorstep.
After a quick game of playstation FIFA and a short appreciation of the bass guitarist in The Who on a taped concert, we (as in Gaz, Chris and I) left for the auspicious natural theatre that awaited us on the promenade. We skipped like small frantic children up to the edge of the sea wall and peered into the black riled waves. Immense power was severely perceptible, and respect awe and beauty were emotions that congealed together in our minds. Life undulated in the rhythmic water, and with it death. The cold maelstrom allowed no eye to pierce its surface, and if the fear of the unknown could physically become manifest it was here, before us, welling up the dark unfamiliar images of aquatic terror within us: the Kraken, shark, terrible stinging jellyfish and the silent gulping horror of the solitary drowned.
We stood back from the concrete bulwark and regarded the stars. It was a clear night and we saw glimpses of the zodiac, but the harsh inner city blaze cut out what we knew was overhead, the vast scatter of the godhead since beginningless time. Still, we appreciated what we could see and considered the tremendous cosmic dome in view, the exposed state of our own nervous systems twinkling, the glistening reflection of consciousness. It was a wondrous night.
The air was soft and light around our heads and we felt the compulsion to take to height, the small sandy alcove of our hilltop retreat called wordlessly. Soon we were in the park, staring at the rich coastline flats and over above them and out into the silent seascape. There were allusions to previous hilltop reflections, higher states of awareness and existences that we had tasted. ‘Awake! O sleeper of the land of shadows!’ said I, quoting Blake, ‘I am in you and you in me, mutual in love divine!’ The self slowly receded into a blurred back-corridor of the mind, and we spoke of higher deaths and ego-less ramblings. Chris laughed at the ebony sky and proclaimed to its gargantuan compass, ‘We get ruined on deepness!’ How many had even glimpsed our world?
We, amusement, we, blood-life and the circulation of entrance into being of our own non-doing all up to God, us of course. This entrance into consciousness had been timeless and so, in eternity we had played it all before and we would play it again in ripped-up calculus with every number a wide-mouthed 0 encompassing all. Ah! Life! We had food, shelter, we needed nothing more. And nobody else would ever realise our peerless wealth. We were.
The night had shown us its pleasures through us, it had hospitably recognised its reality through our own minds and we gratefully withdrew to save ourselves for another nocturnal being we knew would come. We returned to the streets, Chris looked in big grin to us, ‘I’m going in to eat some yoghurt.’ It was a perfect manifesto in the mild heart we shared. Our time tonight was over but that was true and right and not a problem here.
The central reservation ploughed out into the dark and found our individual homecoming. We would happen again no doubt about it.

Streetlight coronas

I found myself surrounded by chirping tongues, relaxed into pure smooth verbose declarations by the thick blue smoke. I watched, an outsider, the chatter palpitating in the warm orange ambience of Chris’s lounge, and considered saying something lewd or extreme to catch attention. Laughing and getting shouted at. Talking about the billion-year-old information stored in our cells. It was all fun. Unknown faces argued over opinions when every individual viewpoint was correct in its own right and there was no absolute answer. Chris nodded to Steve, who now sketched languidly on white paper with a joint cocked idly between the fingers of his weaker hand. Chris turned to me, ‘That is art. Steve is art!’ He laughed beautifully, again to Ste: ‘How does it feel to be a relic?’
We leapt into the night with bright hysterics and easy feet, the football dribbling beyond our control as we ran down the street into the safety of the sodium glow that lit the road all the way down to the beach. Outside the line of streetlight coronas the night was dark-blue and close. Dull tired clouds congregated round the skyline. We kept our games inside the lamp’s warm girdle and formed a compact circle to begin one-bounce. The game was truly on. A lot of my participation consisted of various observations on the efficiency of our ball-control in the cerulean darkness, and I watched in amused awe as skill-ridden moves that defied space and time danced before my eyes. That didn’t mean our assumed formation had any concrete consistency, and I cried in stoned joy as I watched Gaz chase a badly judged pass down the road in manic silhouette, his limbs stretching and popping to keep the ball up in the defiant luminescence and looking like a Western cowboy breaking-in a wild black horse.
We often played here at about three in the morning. There was always a general desire to improve our game after a mammoth bout of jamming and smoking shenanigans had ensued. But tonight something was different, magical. Directly adjacent to the street lay a golf course separated from the road only by a large green wire fence and very seldom did we lose the ball to this honeycomb rampart, that happening only occasionally which was quickly rectified by the para-training Gaz had received. He would fly over the fence with the most minimal of effort and disturbance. Tonight, however, the ball had other plans. The ball was walloped by someone I can’t remember who and we all watched in silent lament its fearful trajectory in slow time, together willing the ball pleading with the physics of the cosmos that our small fluorescent sphere be spared in all this lovely madness. It was not. The trajectory was bad, the ball skimmed the top of the fence and descended into a grassy bleak marsh beyond. Not so unlucky: we left it to Gaz and had the ball between our feet again in no time. But the passion was strong this night, the ego was now a communal presence, I could smell it in the air. We wanted to tame the ball, to make it our own, part of the group. But the urge ate its own head and the ball floated with consummate ease into the golfery once again. The impetus to climb the fence was beginning to falter so instead Dan took the long walk round to the small broken entrance and it was all beginning to get too much. Again the ball was retrieved and before long, as if swayed by some mysterious astronomical array looking down on us in playful trickster guise, the ball resumed its spot over the fence. I broke down to my knees in tears and giggles and I listened detachedly as my silly laughter heaved and swelled in the dark and across the fields and over the sooty chimney tops and cracked roofs. Everybody was in stitches, but our explicit amusement was cut short by the gruff scolding bellow from the bedroom window of the house nearest us at the edge of the park. The neighbourhood was alive to our noise - which had never happened - and this made me feel very merry and good that we were having the time of our lives and nothing mattered right now. We wandered down the road until our distance was less obtrusive, kicking the ball in front of us. Play began again for another five minutes but our co-ordination faculties were all knotted up and things would not get going as completely as they had done. It was no matter, and we all returned to Ben’s house with the warm blood pumping in our ears as if it flowed audibly on the passing wind.

The angel of mad times

Very strange. The angel of mad times has extended its wings full-span. We ended up at Chris’s after collecting Dan and his DVD player to watch the film Altered States, something I was looking forward to viewing. I’d seen it about ten years before and had misty visions of a truly warped kind about it. But that’s beside the point because we didn’t watch it in the end. There was Chris Gaz Pierre Dan Laura Sophie and myself and it began in the garden. Chris and Pierre had been smoking their minds all day long and it was not long before we took the plunge into the hallowed reddery of winery. The crimson tide was about to peak, and we were yet to realise it. Laura and Soph made a minor excursion back to their place to collect some deeply destroying alcohol from the dens of Spain, and things upped in both atmosphere and intoxication. After a couple of great tunes Pierre left us, and the girls eased into a flirtation mindset. I was enjoying myself in the early stages, and a couple of opportunities passed me by for some reason that could have been taken advantage of. Guess I was a little drunk. I know this isn’t deeply insightful reportage but much of the conversation is hazy.
Well, Gaz ended up getting fairly pissed off with Dan’s interfering ways. Dan left to walk Soph back home and things took a decidedly awry turn. Chris, Gaz, Laura and I sat in the lounge. Then, for reasons that would escape me if only for the general level of drunkenness, everyone began to speak their thoughts, and I mean really speak their thoughts, apart from me, who looked on in a sort of outside helpless mad awe. It was as if my presence took disembodied form only, a ghostly observer of my friends. Laura looked uncomfortable, realised the time and had Dan take her back home on his return. I felt a bit disheartened by the way things went. For the last couple of weeks I had been innocently enjoying the covert tensions that existed. Now it was all out in the open and things would not be the same. Sometimes it hits me what an unusual state of affairs this whole shithouse has become.

No fixed destination in mind

Er…Okay, to begin. Don’t understand it. I decided it would be a good idea to take up Chris’s invitation to go to RJ’s (the local scally club) to join the A level results celebration. Oh yeah right. Dirt! After meeting with Gaz and Dan we went to see Mike Wit on this sunny and warm day instead of decaying in Dan’s dark bedroom watching too many monitor screens. They had a fairly new house that I had not acquainted before and it was interesting to say a fair amount. Mike came in from a short keif journey and made it to the newly-extended kitchen, where he proceeded to divide the magic using a nice set of scales and a sharp knife. I was impressed. To express my response to this ounce of beauty I told him how to make an alcohol concentrate, so who knows where he will find himself when that goes down the hatch! Probably face to face with the dancing colours of God’s retina. Anyway, we made our talk and catch-up and left, where we found ourselves on a direct route to as many gardening outlets as we could remember in search of magic seeds of which we had discussed with Mike. After some Doors-filled Mini travel, the product was sought, gotten, and we promptly made our way back home to grind the LSA product. This took ages. Then, we went our temporary separate ways and got back together at Chris’s to get a taxi to RJs. Bad waves of paranoia. Fear and loathing on a grand scale. At the club now. It came on slow. In five minutes Dan had left, and Gaz and I sat on stools and watched the play unfold. The music was grating and harsh. The number of people, the livestock, the flaunting dance, increased at a steady pace. This got tense. I fought nausea. Strange pseudo-insights ensued. After speaking incoherence to Chris and his friends we left – or attempted to. For a moment we couldn’t get out, we were imprisoned, and then a bouncer picked up on our disorientation and opened the door to outside liberation, which we took forthwith.
The long walk home was eager and deliberate. We laughed in manic pitch about our state of consciousness and kept stopping to look up at pockets of stars then remembering we had to keep walking to meet Dan at the Lifeguard house at the end of the promenade. This was a conflict of interests that continued to delay our passage through the black path of night that receded before us. Finally we got to our meeting point but Dan wasn’t there. Our inability to make a concrete decision and act on it was intensified, but somehow we thought it right to keep walking around the area. Motion felt right, while moments of stillness were mysteriously awkward. Soon, Dan showed up and took the opportunity to play paranoia-games by stalking in hooded disguise a few yards behind us, until my reason took over and I called to the dark figure by its rightful name. I don’t remember ever having certitude in my belief it was him. I can’t say.
Now there were three of us the whole route of communication was less clearly decipherable and we experienced a variety of non-starter conversations and inane quipping. We moved cautiously to the nearby park and initiated a small camp on a grassy hilltop. There we talked about the present moment and ‘it’, while silence was beauty and the quiet whirr of a distant car was the soft spoken Om of the universe.
A vehicle drove down the dirt path leading into the nearby field. Caution caught on the wings of passing judgement, and we carefully left our hilltop muse to walk with no fixed destination in mind. We ended up at Gaz’s place, but a social confusion took over and everyone left quite soon. The effect continued for most of the night and came on in waves. It made me think of the sea lapping at the end of my street in the still truth of the illuminated moon.

If I were the only boy in the world and you were the only girl.

Spouse-free house

You may have noticed a few days have disappeared from the journal world. This is a combination of extreme nocturnal activity, intense musical pounding and failure to keep track of the flow of things. To sum up (now there’s a cute phrase) the last few nights have been spent at Ben’s spouse-free house. Parents went to Poland, and a number of us took this as an invitation to fill the domestic gaps. We have lived at Ben’s, our hands beating at the musical instruments thrust into them by the collective creative muse. This activity knows no end. And in two nights we have come up with a couple of complete songs! Through Ben’s mastery and our own ingenious rhythmic learning curve we have articulated some very nice sounds. All of this was punctuated with beer, wine, various intoxicants to lubricate the cogs of creativity and improvisation. The magic has continued onwards and outwards, with little sign of cessation. Ben goes to Bognor Regis for a few days, however, so we have decided to stay low for a while, so as not to abuse the running water of good times and alive!
I’ve decided to run some every day for the next week to see how it affects my physiology and body-mind play. Also, expect more free-flowing prosody from now on. Can’t help feeling I’m acerbating this robotic technical style. Fuck the rules! I can write this journal like I breathe. Fight the syntactical android! Promote spontaneity and muse-kicks! Read on…

Lighthouse

Reading through this journal it’s becoming increasingly apparent that the night has become a period of intense activity and excitability. Everything happens in the once-grim bleakness of non-day. We are night owls, riding the airwaves of nocturnal bliss.
And apropos, the Lighthouse pub was our port of call. It was quiz night and we came to celebrate Hannah’s birthday. More drink. We came fourth in the quiz. Damn the drink. It was nice to see the girls from sixth form again, and I noticed how we had all changed while remaining the same. The evidence of impermanence was all around me. I laughed warm-heartedly as the eternal-now constantly renewed itself and forged in our minds the great temporal fallacy.
A couple of moments rose out of the time fog when I felt I was being watched. The back was turned, the stare was burned. I could sense the heat of a locus vision behind me. I checked my flanks. Did I catch the eye of derision? Was I being paranoid? I will never know.

Steve's party

Gaz rang to tell me about a bottle of red wine. It had appeared on his doorstep with a card attached to inform him that he’d won the tipple in a competition, one he had no recollection of entering. It had been duly accepted and he proposed we drink it in the evening. Later on, I was told of a house party hosted by Steve. I’d been to a previous gathering of his and it had been a good time. The same ambience welcomed us as the door opened to this pleasant debauchery. With the anonymity of Gatsby, an unknown face urged us in with a sideways glance. For a moment I expected him to refer to us as ‘old sports’, but a wordless invitation was the method of choice. The house was generously occupied by a throng of teenagers, something Gaz enjoyed immensely. Feeling a little out of place and perhaps a bit old we headed for the sanctuary of the kitchen, an area where people generally stayed only the required time it would take to crack open whatever alcohol they may be possessing (the drink from a seemingly endless and unspecified source), only a scatter of bottle tops and corks remaining in their wake. We soon came across the hedonistic unit known as Chris. He amused us as he entered with intoxicated gestures and assumed a pose of expressive inebriation, while Gaz and myself drank wine and mused over Nic’s global travels, with the harmonics of Ben’s freeplay on the piano drifting through from the adjoining room and out into the darkness of the garden.
The evening came and went with unnerving alacrity. The drink must be to blame. We finished up in Steve’s bedroom. I had entered via the window by the use of a random ladder from the garden. We listened to some excellent jazz, chatted, finished our drinks and promptly left. That was the party at Steve’s house.

Modo

Events began in the evening when the mutual decision was taken to obviate the usual languid stupor of Dan’s bedroom. At first we were going to the local pub for a quiet drink. This soon evolved, however, into a full-blown trip to Liverpool. We had heard of a neat jazz club in the city and were all eager to sample its rhythmic delights. Alas, it was too good to be true, and in a harsh and irreparable irony the club was closed until the following day. Against Dan’s self-proclaimed better judgement, we hiked towards the Albert Dock in hope that the Café Jazz Bar was still running. It was not. A sharp one hundred and eighty-degree turn had us retracing our steps, and we headed for the Modo bar, which turned out to be quite a chilled venue. Downstairs, the place was furnished with comfortable leather couches. We parked ourselves around a carefully chosen table and ordered a bottle of red wine. Massive Attack soothed our ears, and consoled our hearts. This was the place. To begin with conversation was lax and hard to undertake due to the wide spacing of seats, but soon a two-way rapport began between Ben and myself, while Dan and Gaz initiated their own talk. Inhibitions slowly began to dissolve and by the second bottle of wine, after some bad noise, we decided to move into a small alcove adjacent to us. The music was subdued by the geometry of the walls and the seating, and conversation flowed at a more spirited pace. We were only occasionally rattled by a mild paranoia about how we looked like two gay couples, but this was soon drowned by the rosy cabernet and forgotten.
The night progressed with a similar continuity. We made our departure at 11:30pm and took a taxi back to Wallasey. The night went on until 4am, consisting of a lot of insane chat around a candle-lit garden table. Myself, Ben, Chris, Gaz, Dan, Holly and Laura wept with mirth, mostly originating from the antics of Ben’s face. I felt out of touch for some anonymous reason, and moved in and out of this disposition for the rest of the morning. The night urged its own death, and we went our separate ways in the faint azure glow of dawn.

The cherry tree

I went to the local shopping centre today with Ben. We both needed to pay money into the bank so it seemed logical that we make the journey together. But aside from that, we always found our conversation ran at an alarmingly intellectual rate whenever the banter was accompanied by a moderate walking pace. It is a strange phenomenon. Perhaps it’s the increase of oxygen intake, together with the higher heart rate and subsequent expansion of the funnel flowing life-juice to the reality-generating brain. Who knows? It’s always best to search for a physiological answer. Science has its merits, despite its feverish rationalisation of everything and its continual dismissal of anything that happens to escape its current worldview, however rancid the paradigm.
I had recently been told about the opening of a bakery in the shopping area, one that was advertising an opportunity for employment. I tried to envisage myself in a white coat and hat, serving sausage rolls and sticky buns to the local shoppers, but it didn’t seem right. But then it never does, does it? I can’t see myself in any position of work until I actually gain it – which, it has to be said, in the context of a pursuit towards immediate employment needs, has been a resounding failure. Our entry into the bare shop floor only epitomised our dire search for work. A man was placing empty baking baskets across two long shelves. We asked him for application forms, which he gladly retrieved from the back of the shop, and we shared in his enthusiasm until we discovered the bakery’s opening date: August 28th. Far too late to solve our immediate monetary needs. We left and laughed at our own misfortunes. A quick visit to the job centre proved the little else on offer. The fact remained that while the centre boasted the latest employment-seeking technology (the implementation of touch-screen computers and on-hand printouts) its average search success rate was woefully inadequate. After that travesty, we made our way back home.