After months of procrastination, temps perdu, illness and alcohol abuse, Chapter 6 of Beasts of the Field has finally been completed.

8,663 words
17 (A4) pages

This brings the novel in its current state up to a ridiculous 63,784 words at barely halfway through the total 13 chapters.

So much for that Nanowrimo goal of 50,000 words. This is going to so be over 100,000 words at least when it’s finished, and that’s not the sort of volume any agent’s going to be keen to shift.

Just keep thinking about White Teeth, Ben.

White Teeth, White Teeth, White Teeth…

Uncle

Yesterday I put a line through your email.
Not that I ever used it.
I never sent those exhibition dates you wanted
or my holiday snaps from Madrid.

Yet there you remain - one line,
ink long dried, well-meaning and brief,
buried in the folds of my warm pocket notebook,
each page unremarkable, dog-eared and creased.

What would happen if I used it now?
Hi there, Sorry I never got in touch
Just to let you know I’m happy and
healthy. Lots of love…

The plain and simple truth would reply on your behalf.
A response as cold as stone.
Under your name, in words not your own,
a few lines would sum up what is already known:

Your message was not delivered.
This is a permanent fatal error.

I was right. Twenty six is too old.
 
Never have I felt frustration with myself as this - such an anger at my own laziness, and perhaps my own fear. Barbara said I should have gone, that I should have cancelled my weekend in Cambridge. Steve said it will be fine. I hope so. It was all so unfair - so last minute and all so much at once.

But I just can’t help but feel I’ve made a big mistake.

I prayed on the train. Probably not in a way that most people would recognise. To really pray I think you have to give up a little bit of yourself - something you must be prepared to sacrifice. Whenever I’m in doubt as to what I do one of two things - I give up a little bit of my life (an hour, a day, a month) or I leave it up to god to choose.

Today I let god choose.

I sat back afterwards, exhausted, and the crowded train carriage faded back into reality around me. I couldn’t move, could barely think anymore, so I just sat and looked at people’s auras. It’s a neat trick I learnt recently, and somehow more satisfying than a crossword (especially a cryptic crossword which I’m starting to think were only created by pompous smartarses to make themselves feel superior at the expense of other people’s self-confidence. These are the sort of people who wanted to be in a gang at school but were never allowed, and so compensated by having their parents throw lavish indulgent birthday parties with jelly and ice cream and balloons to which everyone except the other gang members were invited. And I dare say there was even pie. But no clowns. Clowns should never be allowed anywhere, and least of all a children’s party).

I can’t see colours though, not yet. Only the outline - a sort of veil-like shield or halo around the person that wisps like mist or steam. I thought I saw green arond a sleeping man’s head, but that could have just been the effect of the trees blurring past behind.

There are other options. There are always other options. But I can’t get over this certainty that opportunity came knocking and I, for some reason, pretended not to be in. People like Steve and Gwil and Little One have told me about so many other opportunities already. There’s something about writers who are serious about what they want to do that makes them so disarmingly helpful to others who are struggling just as much as themselves. What is it about me that expects people to be guarded and suspicious, or not to expect anyone else to so freely share information such as this to like-minded people? As an aside, Gwil has only recently returned from Cardiff, filming a brief scene in a certain upcoming spin-off of a certain major TV show. Jammy git.

Time reveals all things. Time well tell. You just have to ask him the right questions and listen hard enough to hear his reply.

As ever, a recent humble and unlikely source made me notice a fascinating piece of holisticity. One of those things that’s so glaringly obvious it never remotely registered in my tiny little humanised brain. Just a little thing really, but enough to send my addled mind into overdrive.

Where a hero of mine saw a representation of a double helix, I saw instead a caduceus.

So how is it that a patron god’s 4,500 year old symbol associated with the very preservation of life since the 7th century so closely resembles the very building blocks of humanity, discovered only in 1953? And why did I never notice this before?

Hermes, the god of boundaries and of the travelers who cross them, of shepherds and cowherds, of orators, literature and poets, of athletics, of weights and measures and invention and commerce in general, of liars, and of the cunning of thieves. As a translator, he is the messenger from the gods to humans.

The Eye of Horus

Beyond its modern association with medicine (and in some cases there are even base pairs drawn between the two snakes, highlighting this similarity), the caduceus has always been a very potent and revered symbol since ancient times. It remains present in a great deal of occult literature, though often in the background - a quiet and unfanfared image often just out of sight (a bit like the Egyptian Eye of Horus or Wadjet eye, added almost as an afterthought to the exterior of some caskets. As an interesting side note, the mirror image - left eye to Horus’s right, or moon to Horus’s sun - is the Eye of Thoth. Thoth is closely associated with Hermes in the Ancient Greek pantheon. Furthermore, and perhaps as more of a personal observation, Wadjet in Egyptian mythology was a serpent goddess, and closely associated with Leto in Greece, e.g. the Temple of Leto at Buto, which I was meant to be again attempting to visit in October, but after my Dad said there was no reason to go out with him this year it looks increasingly unlikely I will ever visit this site. Leto’s son Apollo, the Hellenic sun god, is of course closely identified with Horus…. Hmmn, maybe this isn’t a side note after all. I clearly need to look into the relationship of these two symbols and their associated deities much more. I feel like I’ve opened up a great big bag of intertwining holistic goings on just by looking closer into the history of this one symbol).

I even saw a caduceus just recently on my travels. It represents the balance of life and death; mortality; conflict and yet harmony; the division of God and beast and the gulf between the two where man has made a home. And what are these concepts if not quintessentially human attributes? Metaphorical ingredients into the very building blocks of human life?

Looking at the similarity of the two images - one an ancient metaphor for life and the other its most fundamental structure - I’m starting to wonder if I didn’t have Von Däniken all wrong, and that maybe he wasn’t just reading one too many comics.

Another clue:

Click here to see the original page.

Somehow this feels like the kind of entry that should go in my personal journal, my little red book. It’s probably the kind of thing that wouldn’t make sense to anyone else in many ways. But aren’t those entries often the best? Besides, since I feel I’ve confidently exorcised a large content of the usual flavour of my black ink scribblings on red leatherbound parchment, I’ve sort of redefined what I use my personal journal for. Mostly it’s a bizarre mix of occult observations in the tiny schema of my little human life, mingled with the eclectic addition of such things as shopping lists and recipes for the perfect green curry, with brief spasms of personal joy when I realise that life isn’t always that bad.

For one reason or another however, this entry goes here.

It’s been a long day at the end of another long week. A good day at work, if such a thing really exists. Everything that should have arrived did, and everything that was meant to go out went out. Leaving a little early, I could see three 214s in the distance at my bus stop and, naturally, I missed all of them, so I got the 390 instead. Twice I saw two solitary magpies on my way home. Briefly I considered if the superstition was worth it, and ultimately decided it too fallible to hold on to.

I walked back through Waterlow Park, taking advantage of the incredible weather and taking in the incredible scent of Summer having returned to North London. Briefly I paused to chastise a timid squirrel I passed that I wasn’t remotely interested in the crisps it was feasting on and to not be so precious.

As I crossed the bridge over the water I saw a young man in light blue standing on the other side. He seemed pretty enough, but I got this strange feeling from him. I can’t really describe it. The only way I can describe it is that it’s the sort of feeling you’d get if you saw someone you weren’t supposed to recognise - someone you knew from reading someone else’s diary or spying on them through a window everyday. I smiled at him as I walked past and then carried on, looking at trees, smiling at the concluding light of another happy day. Suddenly I was aware he was following me - don’t ask how I knew. I just knew. I turned around and he indeed was, in that clumsy endearing way that people do when they’re trying to look like they’re not following you

I thought I’d have some fun.

I left the park and immediately slouched against the cemetery wall and lit a cigarette, smoking it with one foot against the brick in a sort of James Dean Devil may care manner. Soon the man exited the park, apparently in a hurry, and then slowed when he saw me. His body language seemed to be of someone who was embarrased. I looked ahead purposefully, so I could look at him as he passed me. Nice blue eyes, like seawater - my favourite shade in a human. He was smiling coyly as he walked - it was a smile that said “I know what you’re doing”, and still shy in apparently trying to look at me out the corner of his eye without looking as if he was looking at all. He went round the corner. I gave it a minute, smiling to myself, and then carried on walking, but he was halfway down the hill and apparently not inclined to look back. “Oh well,” I chuckled, “fun and games over for today.”

As came up to The Statue, I passed a tiny old black woman coming up the hill. I’d seen her before - I think she lives on the estate. I know she’s not quite all there - I remember passing her once as she was shouting something at some builders about her mattress. I had an urge to say hello to her as I passed her, but she beat me to it.

“The boat sank,” she said instantly to me.
“Really?”
“The ferry.”
“Which ferry?”
“It sank before it reached the ferry. Listen…”

She then whistled a tune, apparently by way of explanation, though I didn’t recognise the tune or the logic. Briefly I noticed her teeth - crooked and brown. I smiled at her as she whistled, with little else to do.

“One breath!” she announced gleefully.
“Well done!”
“The boat sank.”
“Where?”
“The ferry, it… ugh,” she then grunted in a scowl, walking off in disgust.
“Have a good day,” I chirped sincerely to her back.

I watched Mr Blue walk down the hill, and then crossed the street to my flat. The gate to the estate was closed. I remember thinking this was odd. The gate is very rarely closed. I stood outside the front door to finish my cigarette, wondering if it was a full moon tonight, when a black haired woman with a kind face and some heavy shopping approached. I recognised her from when the whole estate’s electricity had been knocked out a few months back, and I’d opened the front door, candle in hand to look at the hallway in total darkness. To my surprise I encountered her standing in her own open doorway at the other end of the hall, doing exactly the same thing. I remember we’d both giggled nervously at discovering each other indulging our own inner children.

“Hello,” I smiled pleasantly.
“Hello,” she replied with a smile. You can always tell a genuine smile from a fake one. “Hot,” she then said, simply.
“Isn’t it just?”
“I think there’s going to be a thunderstorm.”
That got me excited. “Really?!”
“Yeah, look at it,” she motioned to the sky.
“Fantastic!”
She looked at me like I was a lunatic, and laughed. I laughed too. I can’t help it. I love thunderstorms. I was born in one, a fairly wild one. Maybe that’s why.

I’ve just checked - it’s a full moon tomorrow. That makes sense somehow. It certainly leaves a little more time to prepare. Somehow it almost seems to explain things. It seemed such an odd journey back, but this heat makes most things seem odd.

that you’re allowing life to pass you by? That there are people who are far more dedicated and far less lazy than you in pursuing the things they want from life? People you forgot about at school or lost touch with at university, maybe even people you only spoke to once or twice whilst you were there, but still leave a heart-stopping impression on you when you found out how much they’ve worked and achieved since they left.

And what have I done by comparison? What have I really achieved? Talent with no drive means nothing. All I seem to be good at is making excuses. Next month I’m going to be twenty six. Twenty six. It doesn’t sound that old at all does it?

It should.

To me, it really really should.

I think I sort of know I’ll never get to any of these places. So why do I keep trying? What am I doing that is wrong? What am I not doing? Did I choose the easy path? I always habitually thought of myself as a risk taker, but evidently I am not. I guess I only take risks about the things that ultimately don’t really matter to me, and thus are really no risk at all.

Must work harder. I must. I must. I must. I must.

I must spend this weekend finding out what it is I want to do, how I can do it, how others have taken things they’ve done to somewhere, and how I can do that too.

The only alternative is to wake up one day, middle aged and alone with a job I don’t want to be doing, and all because I gave up the ties that I thought would hold me back, and yet never once pushed myself forward.

In fact, now I think about it, I think I could come up with far more pertinent shock tactics to stop people from smoking…

(more…)