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.