Whatever happened?

‘They pass through your sorrow and leave you quite still...sitting among your souvenirs.’ Dan Fogelberg

I stay in my room all day, with barely a glance outside. I prefer to sleep, in dreams everything is clear, contrasting a life where things seem fogged up, hard to see. When I open my eyes, silence surrounds me. I am like a stone, washed up on a distant shore, lying heavily in the sand.

Someone is knocking at the door. I turn my music on; I can still hear the knocking and the voice that accompanies it, wrenching me from my solemn reprieve.

I open the door, my Mother stands there. She tells me to walk outside more, that feeling the wind on my face and the grass beneath my feet are some of the most precious gifts life can give you. I would rather life give me more than wind and grass, rather the ability to make something of myself. I don’t tell her this of course, a barrier of suspicion lies between us, years of fighting and not understanding cannot be changed so quickly. There are no bridges, only the smoking remains of those we have burnt. She looks at me, and tells me how thin I have become. Am I? Am I really so thin? What do you expect when all that was me has withered away.

My mind is filled with flickering pictures, like shadow puppets on a screen, nothing is clear anymore. Psychologists are forever digging up dreams from under my pillows.

My degree, I had hoped it would explode from the shadows, that it would give meaning to my life, to prove that I can do something. It would be everything and more.

Recently my attempts at anything remain virtually non-existent. It is like trying to have a conversation in a cafe with someone. Your mind isn’t there, its watching the woman outside, wondering what she’s doing, following her home, focused on her and what she is doing with her life.

I sit on the floor, burying my head in my hands, tears slip through my fingers, glinting on my rings, slipping away, just like everything else. I want to find someone to blame, someone to scream and rage against.

I don’t believe that I can predict my fate; no matter how hard you try you don’t have any control over it. You can hope, and perhaps try to alter it in some small way, but in the end you can only live and die by fate. This is how life happens, it hurts you, it baffles you, it makes you scream, but the only thing you can do with it, is to live it.

I have decided to go to Brighton for Halloween. I like Halloween it has a certain romantic fantasy about it, the way you can put on a mask, and with that mask chase away all the feelings of doubt and pain, become someone else, even if just for a night.

The 4am Crowd

"You never listen to a word I say. You only see me for the clothes I wear, or did the interest go so much deeper? It must have been the colour of my hair."
Public Image Ltd

Friday is always a whirlwind for me. Running from place to place trying to get everything sorted for the night ahead. But i always make time to meet with my elderly Grandmother for lunch in a little cafe near her home, and listen as she tells me stories ive heard a thousand times. I nod and smile politely, gasp in all the right places, the perfect audience for someone who has lost so much of who she used to be.

After our meal, besides feeling vaguely ill, she must think that i might promptly expire unless almost forcibly fed great quantities of food, i return home and begin getting ready for my evening. I wash and style my hair, spend almost an hour doing my face and applying intricate eye make up, before moving on to choose an appropriately slutty/chic costume for the night. Throughout the entire process i am plagued with a constant thought - why? Why am i spending so much time and money - something which i am constantly in need of - on my appearance when any other day im more then content in an old pair of skinny jeans and a battered band t. I wonder sometimes, should I just turn up like that one evening? Run a comb through my hair, a dash of eyeliner and throw on some old clothes. What would they think? Thats the problem with me, with all of us. We're so fucking focused on what other people think of us, that we're willing to spend an extortionate amount of time and money on trying to fit in, match up to the conceptions of what other people think is appropriate, the right clothes, the right hairstyle. How much longer until its the right friends, the right career? How much longer are we going to let ourselves me tied up by a society that judges us on the way we look?

Venturing out into London on a Friday night can be an, interesting experience, those 'Bright Young Things' are out in force, the fashionable ones, like vampires they hide by day and come out at night, preying on eachother, taking it in turns to be the hunter or the hunted. I pass them on my walk, the further i get into the citys heart the more of them appear, until arriving at my destination i see that not only are they there, but they're my friends. I may have these wild dreams about throwing of the 'shackles' of society, but i wont, these 'shackles' are of my own making.

This fantasy world, lifestyles ungoverned by any of the 'normal' constraints of society, are intense, carefree and impromptu. Looking around I try to see past the fantasy, through the cult of materialism - i can see the citys tears. This life, the people in it, some subside solely on alcohol and sex, their faces wholly consumed and corroded my pleasure. Nagging thoughts about what I should do mean squat when they are not acted upon. Wrapping myself in ideals doesn't stop me from being one of my vampires, narcissism is most certainly my dominant vice. I can only hope that one day, ill stop caring what people think, before i lose my bearings and sink, like so many others into this dark underworld of our own creation.

My name is Aleks, and I'm an alcoholic.

"Everything, everything began like this. It all began on this glamorous and dazzling, yet fatigued and frail visage. That was the experiment."
Marguerite Duras

My name is Aleks. I am 21 and in a constant state of nervous ambition to do something with my, as yet, unidentified existance. I have a drive though, a faith in my future, whatever that may be, and in people. It gives me something to live for, even if it does fall outside the bounds of 'normality'. Living in London has, im sure, something to do with it. An air of supririority hangs like a fog over the denizens of this enchanting yet depraved city, effecting us in a mirade of ways, not all of them good.

The people I hang around with, we compliment each-other in both look and personality, an eclectic bunch of intellectuals, musicians, socialites, and drifters. We are aimless, wandering without direction or purpose from one day to the next, always sure that the ever elusive purpose, goal, intent, is just around the corner. They are like butterflies, beautiful yet fragile, flitting from one flower to the next, filling their unsatisfied state with desire before perching for the night in whatever abode they find themselves in. Some call us 'tasteless' 'flash' 'superficial', others emulate and desire us, and to others we are merely yet another generation of begin youth. But we are a future, we will grow older and as we do we will - hopefully - mature, we will find our purpose and achieve it.

I want to be a writer, I know that much, but what I 'want' to write I have no idea. Seeing as how I am still as yet undecided on my subject matter, I will write about what I know, the people, the places, the experiences I have had. Maybe it will give some purpose to this overwhelming desire to do something, something real.