The weather today is...

The weather today looks like the first stage of bread being outmuscled by mould.

Have you ever had that feeling where the inside of your head boils over like a pan full of rice, and the only thing lacking is that you're not frothing at the mouth?

Apparently the homo-sapien is the most intelligent species on the planet.

I have spent countless hours of my time probing this earthly decree with the philosophies of Sartre, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Kant, Descartes, Wittgenstein and Hume alike. With the literature of Burroughs, Ginsberg, Breton, Tzara, Apollinaire, Bukowski and Plath; and the artistry of Van Gogh, Renoir, Monet, Matisse, and Cezanne to name but a few.

Yet in all of this, the one thing I have surmised is that thinking is futile.

Wittgenstein said that " the aspects of things that are most important to us are hidden because of their simplicity and similarity. The real foundations do not strike a man at all."

To understand something you must first know what it isn't.

How backwards is the human mind? An almighty fucking paradox!

How we long for this blissful inertia.

You can't be angry at the rain for being wet.

Post office

Upon entering the post office, I naturally regarded everything as mundane and usual.

This mindset I find is a particularly good angle of perception, as even the slightest alteration to an otherwise subconscious preconception, can be permeated in an instance, with the mere fluttering of an eyelid.

The mouth in front belongs to a man of about 65 years. Words spurt out like a swarm of flies eager to land on food or shit. 

"an' shi kept'n fuckin' shuvin', no me, shi wa fuckin' shuvin."

I assumed the role of intent observer as the man relived his experience of being shoved by a woman, through a mimicry that suggested this past confrontation was unfolding in the present.

His mouth continued to move faster than my brain could process words, when suddenly the man erupted into chorus of Starman, by David Bowie. Needless to say I was surprised, and incredibly awestruck.

After this stunning rendition, the man reverted to his indignant demeanor, swearing profusely about the woman who pushed him.

According to studies, the use of profanities in everyday language emanates from the right hemisphere of the cerebral cortex. The spontaneous renditions of songs by David Bowie I assume still baffle scientists.

The right hemisphere is the 'artist', associated with creativity, spatial navigation and emotive responses from certain stimuli, whereas the left hemisphere of the cerebral cortex is the 'scientist', associated with pragmatics, problem solving and analysis, and language.

An example of the prevalence of swearing as a deep rooted sign of emotion comes from the example of a patient who had the entire left hemisphere of his brain removed because of cancer. The patient could not construct syntactic sentences but did blurt out swear words. (much like the symptoms of Tourette disorder)

This gave me food for thought. Is pragmatic, syntactic language couched in an inherent dishonesty, where all it requires to present an unfettered emotion is a fucking arse bashingly, tit shiningly, shittingly good swear word?

A poem written to me in a dream.

My ego over my own house

is never tiresome.

I climb the rope

and touch your hair like an interview

and ask if you saw me

in the iridescent ink pool

and wonder if it's tedious.

Am I tedious?

Poem : Whilst looking at Ginsberg.

I have recently noticed that when reading poetry, 

I read the last lines first.

I pondered over this for some time, 

with no real sense of what I was looking for,

no inherent conclusion.

Then,

like a brass knuckle shuffle, it hit me in the face.

A moth fluttering, caught in the gaze of my peripherals

clambering from the sight of light

on what must have seemed like

an infinite plane of landscaped glass

held my attention for no real purpose

a misfiring by product of evolution;

a malfunctioning navigational system

electricity the choreographer.

What objective truth was I searching for,

why can't I touch this infinite expanse of water and sand?

I continued, under the superior gaze of a desk lamp, 

to read the last lines of each poem

never noticing that the moth had flown away.

Poem : 11th August and I am weighed down by gravity and condiments.

Trying to run away from the sky

as if it were a bad smell

was always going to be a challenge.

You enter my brain diaphanously, 

you as a single concept illuminated by the tender pulse of the moon, like the whites of a cracked egg, 

making my fingerprints glisten.

Archaic thoughts of Van Gogh, Monet and Renoir sprout from sullen crevices of the pavement like the skin of a baked potato, 

and needless to say, I feel meaningless. 

A fraud amongst Common Fox Gloves, water lilies and arthritis, 

dissolving in the preservatives of my chicken strips wrap. 

I wait to be a million chisels of marble, 

a billion strokes of paint, 

yet the matter I consist of 

is merely mayonnaise and

a mountain of shit.

If I have found purpose in the head of a plant, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. (09)

I walked further into the realms of isolation, and stumbled across what can only be described as a giant's shoe. A great wad of tanned leather, torn from the foot of a colossal being. It made me think that I wasn't alone, and also how wasteful the human mind was, in that with this great expanse of perception and thought, every person has succeeded in feeling alone at some point in their lives. 

There are great microcosms of living organisms that surround us, sealed in like trillions of buzzing atoms in a jam jar. Sometimes it takes the remnants of living particles, or a metaphorical death for us to realise this. In this case the idle shoe of a giant.

I am reminded of a Jean Paul Sartre phrase, lodged in my memory. "If you are alone when you're by yourself, you are in bad company." 

Whilst still thinking about giant garments of clothing, I wondered where the raw materials would come from to make such expansive items.  

I decided not to dwell on it.

A large metal contraption awaited my eagerness. My distinctly human tendencies came to the fore and I wondered what the object was once used for. 

What purpose did it have? I thought, reducing its existence to a past tense of unimportance, instead of thinking, what is its purpose?

Surely, I am still seeing it, imposing my own interpretations onto this infinitely pacifistic object, thus it has a purpose and is serving it, and, in turn, has no purpose in-itself, only of-itself. Bloody Jean paul Sartre! 

I learn that there is nothing to learn.

'Purpose.' Noun. The reason for which something is done or created.

I am somewhat angered by this term. Although I hold a high regard for purpose within my own work, I am all too aware of its dichotomy. An entirely fabricated means of ogranising objects in terms of importance. Selfishness really; the underlying attribute of all living things.

There is evidently a distinction between biological purpose, and conventional human purpose. One is imaginary, the other is not. 

Camus, and his Myth of Sissyphus epitomises my thinking. 

The purpose of a wing is to make something fly, the purpose of an eye is to turn light into a computable image, the purpose of an ear is to convert waves into sounds. The purpose of the metal contraption was anything I implied.

I came across thousands of sprouting plants from up through the pleasingly spongey vegetation that quilted the floor, all sharing the same unconscious desire.

The purpose of the plant, as the purpose of the human, were identical, and forever pushing boulders.

I felt hungry.

The colour of death with gravity the artist. (08)

I came across an enormous fallen tree that protruded slightly into my chosen path. I felt a sense of annoyance but immediately realised the futility of being annoyed at a tree. It's roots were solidified and compressed by a mass of indecipherable bric-a-brac. Their ends arbitrarily angled like a tapestry of tiny ideas and muscle fibres, broken at the end. It was quite hard to believe that roots so small once held up this gigantic hunk of matter. 

I am reminded of a song by Modest Mouse entitled 'Gravity rides everything' and believe it to be quite befitting in this situation, and in every situation I have ever experienced in my relatively short life thus far. 

I think of the numerous years this tree had been resisting gravity, and find it easy to relate this to my own legs, which makes me appreciative.

It also reaffirms my indignant viewpoint of physics being an almighty bitch.

Like a child in a sweet shop, I saw another tree (Yes, I was in a forrest at the time) and became vigorously excited in my eyes. This tree looked remarkably like an elephant. A nice find, as I had recently watched a programme about elephants. Incidentally, primer grey is the colour a human body turns after death. Not to sound too pessimistic to most people, it is simply an interesting fact. I find it hard to understand the taboo nature of death and its characterisation of morbidity (as in abnormal or unhealthy) Surely appreciation of the ephemerality of the human interpretation of existence heightens conscious experiences.

I had a fleeting aspiration and hoped that my insides were warm like the colour of butter.

I caught a glimpse of the sun, a white aperture through an envious canopy, and I realise how small I am. 

The forrest was a desolate place and I had a quiet suspicion that I owned the world. 

White Cross : The universe smells like barbeque sauce (07)

White Cross. I have no idea where that is, except for being exactly where I was. I walk for a little while and climb over a fence into a field. 

I traverse the relatively flat terrain. The grass bites my feet and fills my shoes, which feels refreshing. Another two, similarly looking fields move under my feet until I acquiesce with a proverbial fork. I relish the opportunity of making a decision. 

Left or right?

I choose left.

An abandoned building is the first notable landmark. With door ajar, I gingerly peer inside half expecting to be greeted by....well, I'm not exactly sure. 

A flock of empty beer cans, a herd of plastic bottles, a bunch of cigarette ends and a gang of needles were the items that said hello. A little Narnia crack den, but apart from that, nothing to be too perturbed about. The building's name (or misnomer) quite clearly preceding it. It was more of an unenthusiastic building than a dangerous one.

I progressed into the woodland.

A faint wisp of barbeque sauce meandered through leaves and moths, reaching my olfactory bulb and tickling my hippocampus, stimulating a recent memory of grilled burgers. This was most peculiar. A bush stood isolated in the nearest opening. My curiosity drew me over the muddied ground towards it.

A dark singular brach jutted away from the thin main trunk, exposed to a curious eye. It harboured a secret galaxy of burning red bulbs of life and dust, light years away from each other, suspended in time. Isolated. It reminded me of Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot. This single branch, amongst all branches, attached indefinitely to the light filtering through the cone cells of my retina, stimulating phototransduction and caressing my optical nerve, electrifying neurons and shaking hands with my parietal lobe. A reflection of our own isolated selves. 

"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." 

- Carl Sagan. 

I continued on my way and reduced the universe to a memory.

Voyeurism and dog biscuits (06)

Two Thirty. My plan of getting on a bus has not yet materialised. Instead, I stood opposite a shopping centre watching people cross the road.

Interestingly enough, I witnessed an adult male, approximately twenty five years old, cross the road, finishing with a running jump onto the opposite pavement.

I found this to be partially inspiring and admirable.

Soon afterwards I sat on the floor outside a supermarket, and contemplated sushi and the voyeuristic nature my behaviour had recently taken. I took a photo of a security camera above me to commemorate this mind set.

I received a heckle from a chav who wrongly accused me of taking his picture. I come to the conclusion that humans, especially when a camera is involved, are easily provoked and inherently narcissistic in wanting (not to be) the subject of the photo. A case of reverse (or perverse) psychology. An almost insurmountably feckless attribute.

I find myself in the dog biscuit section of a small food market. I'm not sure what I'm doing here, but I enjoy the graphics on the packaging and I imagine briefly what it would be like to exist as a dog biscuit, particularly a 'Jumbone' as I am fond of the name. This existential quandary was fleeting however, as I quickly realised that life as a dog biscuit, although filled with contentment and indifference, would actually contain neither, as my ontological interpretation simply supposed that dog biscuits have synapses and a limbic system. Instead a 'Jumbone' contains: 

Rice flour, glycerin, sugar, cellulose powder, wheat flour, propylene glycol, sodium caseinate, natural flavor, dried meat by-product, potassium sorbate, vitamin A supplement, niacin, riboflavin, pyridoxine hydrochloride, thiamine mononitrate, folic acid, dl-alpha tocopherol acetate, sodium tripolyphosphate, salt, calcium carbonate, potassium chloride, dicalcium phosphate, zinc oxide, and copper sulfate. 

None of these ingredients contain a nervous system of any kind.

I buy water and a banoffee muffin. I make my way to the bus stop. Wait. The bus arrives and I get on. I buy a day rider. Wait. Then I get off.