NEARLY

Hi, and thank you for flying into my web.  You may know, the first 22 posts of this blog are the text of my ebook, 'How To Become A Crack Addict'.  You can read that here, or buy it on amazon for about £3, if you're into that kind of thing.  If you do, I would love a review - there are three already, and a fourth would be spiffing.  As for now, this blog is the fairly frequent thoughts and conclusions of yours truly, Benjamin of Turnham Green (that's me).  And here is today's helping of thought...

NEARLY

It's very short what I have to say today, because I feel quite sad, and blocked up, if I'm honest.  I've got Newsnight on, and Clannad on youtube, but ultraloud adverts between their Celtic bouts of mellowness are kinda spoiling the vibe.  I've had quite an isolated few days, and it's beginning to depress me, drive me mad, and there's no real need for it.  Today, at least, I got up, and didn't go straight to my computer...instead, I went straight to the TV, and watched the snooker, which is an improvement.  I had a cup of tea in my new Cancer Research mug, originally from those exclusive purveyors of coffee, Whittards.  I don't think I've been happy in about twenty years, and that was only for about ten minutes.

I've been retail-therapying lately, although all in a good cause.  A year ago, my little cabin/studio-flat was a husk, evidence of ten+ years of addiction, days in bed, malnutrition, and despond.  A year ago, and for years beyond, there was no lush blue rug, mottled and sweeping like a sea beneath my naked feet, no candleholders whatsoever, and now I'm spoiled for choice when I want to light a candle.  And this, if anything, is surely a sign of recovery...?

And because you stumbled into my web, here is a song about webs...by me, for you...

A Song Called Cobwebs

And that seems to be all I've got to say today.  I'll try to be back tomorrow, though.  Bet you're glad about that.  Oh, and the reason I called this post 'Nearly' is because I came close to using today, or at least close to going 'for a walk'...somehow I didn't, even though I've never felt more emotionally critical in years...but I'm working on it.  Thanks for being there.  Honestly, thanks.  Maybe our paths will cross again.

KISSER OF PAVEMENTS

Hello.  Thank you for visiting.  The first thing I have to say today is this song, if that's ok:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RB2hPgBh6s

It's just a link to youtube, written and 'filmed' around the time I got a webcam, hence the wafting around and self-conscious pixilation.  But that said, I may as well also confide in you, if I may...?

KISSER OF PAVEMENTS

Coiled on tarmac, I'm the White City Serpent - the white line in the middle of the road that won't straighten out.  There are a few roads I'm to be found on, curled when I should be straight.  B-roads, high-streets, I once appeared in a GCSE geography project.

I don't have much to say these days.  Seems I've been silent for years anyway.  And me and my friends, most of whom I hurt, intelligent failures, falter like ghouls in search of a line that curves when it should be straight.  I was listening to a-ha on youtube, and I was halfway through a bad track, The Sun Always Shines On TV to follow, but I couldn't be bothered to forward, cos I'm just not in that much of a hurry.  That's how relaxed I am these days.

I do hope I don't miss anything important.

Thanks for listening.

ASTRONAUT ADRIFT

Hello, and thank you for coming.  You may know, the first 22 posts of this blog are the text of my ebook, 'How To Become A Crack Addict' (Jan to April 2013).  You can read that here if you wish, or buy the ebook for about £.3.35 or so on amazon.  If you do, I would really appreciate a review, because it has three positive ones to date, but all feedback is appreciated, and helps get the book a better profile, or whatever the technical term is.  Nowadays, this blog is the fairly frequent musings of myself, Benjamin of Turnham Green.  And here are today's cosmic conjurings...

ASTRONAUT ADRIFT

In addiction, I was like an astronaut, cocooned in my capsule, either getting high, or rueing the consequences of it.  Once in a while, I'd go for a little spacewalk, still lashed to the craft, floating just far enough to meet the evil alien that was delivering the craved-for goods.  There, against the blackness of space, we'd exchange our compatible currencies, and I'd reel myself back in, and the alien would go off to the nearest trainer-shop and buy some more footwear.  There, floating about in zero gravity, zero hope, I'd spark up my space-pipe, and get high for anything up to a few hours, at the end of which I'd use another drug to combat the comedown of the first, then try, and fail, to sleep, as the world span below like a slow, distraught parent, overseeing impotently my dismal mission.

Nowadays, however, for reasons almost beyond my ken, I'm not contacting that evil alien anymore, and I seem, if not quite happy, at least less sad to be pottering about my capsule, occasionally going outside to repair a panel, or polish the portholes.  But more and more I feel unfamiliar to myself, as do my circumstances.  When I dream, there in my slumber-tube, I often feel I'm floating serenely, though helplessly, away from my ship, and out into the dark, star-pocked void of space.  The sun, white and irresistible, blinds and warms, but still, when I rotate to face away from it, the infinite potential of the universe presents itself, and I wonder where, if anywhere, I'm going to end up.  I try to swim, but my efforts do nothing in terms of changing my trajectory, and I float like a discarded puppet towards I know not where.  I see a planet, a shifting disc, almost seeming within arm's reach, but in reality a lifetime or more away.  Where am I going?  Will I have the air to get there?

Yes, this life outside the capsule is new, unfamiliar, and I'm wary of it, but getting back to the cocoon isn't an option.  Sometimes I think I see the evil alien's ship, a grain of light darting across the blackness, on its way to serve up some spacedust to another gullible traveller.  I, meanwhile, drift, at the mercy of forces beyond my control, happy to least to be a prisoner of infinity, rather than a trapped soul in a tin can.

This is a song I wrote, if you would like to hear it:  Broken

And that is all I have to say today.

THE STATUE MOVES

Good day, and thank you for dropping by.  You may know, the first 22 posts of this blog are the text of my ebook 'How To Become A Crack Addict'.  You can read it here, or buy it on amazon as an ebook.  If you do buy it, for a mere three quid or so, then please do leave a review, because all feedback is appreciated.  Meanwhile, this blog is now the pretty frequent thoughts and musings of yours truly, Benjamin of Turnham Green.  And here is today's selection of profound thoughts...

THE STATUE MOVES

I'm quite depressed today, but in a good way.  As you may know, I spent twelve or so years smoking crack, and not really prospering at all, to understate things a little.  And even though I'm some months clean from that insidious substance, I can still feel torn within, half wanting to slowly, cautiously progress, day by day, week by week, to where I might have been, or perhaps to somewhere completely unprepared for.  But the other half of me, tangled and tied, tries, with velvet fist, to drag me down into the mire, where only appetite and remorse prevail.

I feel a bit like Ukraine, you'll be thrilled to know.  Part of me wants calm, consensus, patience, tolerance, but the other bit, mesmerised by the Putin within, wants force, appetite, autocracy, no dissent.  This inner-Vladimir still crows and cajoles from the dark Parliament inside.  If only I could just get along and live peaceably with myself.

The addict runs, hurtles even, to that point where ecstasy has faded before you've even registered it.  It's an amazingly static life for someone forever on the run.  It taunts the new, slower, more patient me, claiming I need to speed up, turn to it occasionally, if only as a reward for having proved I can live without it.  Ah, that beckoning Putin within, blocking my internet searches, flooding all the screens with propaganda, still likes to grandstand in the dark, whispering a message of hope, seductive, sinister, like a bullet with your name on that never gets fired.

And I think that's all I've got to say today, apart from here is one of my songs, which perhaps you'd like to hear:  I'm Too Tired To Kill You

See you tomorrow?

WOULD YOU LIKE CHOCOLATE ON YOUR CAPPUCCINO?

Hello again, or for the first time.  Just in case you're not aware, the first 22 posts of this blog are the text of my ebook, 'How To Become A Crack Addict' (Jan to April 2013), which you can read here, or buy for three quid or so on amazon, in the form of an ebook, or for a kindle.  Nowadays, this blog is the fairly frequent musings of me, and I am Benjamin of Turnham Green.  And here is today's helping of Benjamin of Turnham Green, that's me...

 

WOULD YOU LIKE CHOCOLATE ON YOUR CAPPUCCINO?

 

Time was when this was the most important question I'd be asked.  Now, although it's not the most important, it is the most regular.  I used to go to my local coffee-shop (a well-known chain) on money-days, hoping that somehow I'd be able to hold the day together, and not go and use crack.  The theory was that if I could at least look bookish midmorning, something might kick in and make the rest of the day bookish too.  Or maybe I'd have a really good idea, go home and begin a book, or some extraordinary piece of art, a song, anything but crack, with its inevitable, agonising comedown.

It rarely succeeded.  Some days I'd haunt the coffee-shop when I was broke, usually because I'd used crack a day or two before.  Without money, as you know, it's hard to get anything.  I used to fake the stamps on my loyalty-card, to get a free cappuccino - a faint red felt-tip crescent usually passed as a feeble stamping from a previous, perhaps puny barista.  Then, innocent as you like, I'd receive a free drink of my choosing, would sit down, read my braille book, and hope, pray even, for that special idea that would change my life, get me out of addiction, and despair.  Or maybe I'd pray for that watershed meeting, made sweeter by coincidence, with whoever happened to be at the next table...a woman who, due to knowing nothing about me, found me interesting...or would it be a publisher, who, by my general loquaciousness, would sign me up there and then, begging for the rights to my drugs hell, which I'd already disclosed, a few sentences into our chat.

But, more often than not, I'd just sit there, reluctantly reading something in braille, like Beowulf, or Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse, neither that uplifting, resenting the fact that I'd come to a point in my life where I was faking stamps on my loyalty-card, peering blurrily at the world which seemed another dimension from the one I inhabited.

But now, I hope you'll agree, I've changed, been reconfigured, am trying, striving for something I don't even care much if I reach, because now I'm so serene that I know it's the travelling that matters, not the arriving.  Oh, how I hate the cult of arrival.

And at least, on my caffeine-pocked pilgrimage, I don't stamp my card anymore for a fake cappuccino.  I pay may way now.  I'm transfigured.

Please come back, because I have abandonment issues.

And please hear my song, which is here:  Cappuccino Morning

And that is all I have to say today.

LUXURY PROBLEM

Good day, and thank you for coming.  You might already know that the first 22 posts of this blog are the text of my ebook 'How To Become A Crack Addict' (from Jan to April 2013).  You can also buy it for a modest fee on amazon, which I heartily encourage, and, if you do, please do leave a review, whatever you think of it, as all feedback is precious to me.  Meanwhile, here is today's scintillating entry of the blog, and a link to a song of mine on youtube at the end, if you're still awake...

LUXURY PROBLEM

One of my favourite clichés from the months, nay, years I spent haunting the rooms of Narcotics Anonymous, and other twelve-step congregations.  But today I had one...a luxury problem, that is.

I was in Nero, a well-known coffee-shop near to my exclusive pad, when I realised I needed the loo (possibly brought on by my Americano (which I'd nearly finished)).  Was I to go toilet, and return to my drink?  Or should I finish it, and then go?  I had to factor in the fact that the drink, about half an hour old, had been bathing in strong sunlight, as shone through the southwest-facing window (it was around four in the afternoon (for optimum shine)).  Feeling torn, perplexed, and peeved, I felt it was best to take my toilet, and return to enjoy the last inch of my Americano without the nagging from below hampering my enjoyment of it.  And so I did.  On my return, I savoured another ten to fifteen minutes at table, reading my braille Old Curiosity Shop, and sipping with a newfound nonchalance my still-warm Americano.  And I didn't even feel that guilty about spending someone else's holiday, possibly yours, for the thousandth day of this peculiar sabbatical.

And, to return to my theme, this was indeed a luxury problem.  In the thick of my using, I probably wouldn't have even got to Nero, that well-known coffee-shop near my bijou cabin, nor would I have been reading in braille my Dickens, nor would I have even been thankful of the sun's beams tweaking through the glass, warming both me and my beverage.

And the people who work there are so friendly, and I didn't really mind that I'd been in there virtually every day of the year, so far.  They do a chocolate bear now, you know, called Bruno.

And here is a song in tribute to coffee-shops and cappuccinos everywhere...
The Coffee Shop Of Dreams

And that's all I have to say today, if that's ok.  Tomorrow?