The Son of Man - Rene Magritte, c.1964.
The short story so far... (Part I)
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One of the interesting things about death, which I have come to realise as of being late is that there's an awful lot of it to going on all of the time, and that once you get over the initial shock, and the subsequent disappointment, there are a lot of support groups around to help you settle into your new celestial neighbourhood. Unfortunately I find the insipid cheeriness of support groups, especially ones of religious denotation, overbearing, and try to avoid them at all costs. I can only hope that the opposite was true for the three hundred pound, six foot three, heavily tattooed and heavily armed man that had just been introduced unwillingly to some of gravity's more unpopular and inaccessible work. However, my hopes that he was a part time Samaritan call worker weren't high, and in fact, as I sat half and hour later, smoking my sixteenth cigarette, crouching somewhere near the umbrella stand and wondering what to do in-between my frightened sobs and forays into morbid curiosity; the thought didn't even enter my mind. One reason for this was that the crossroads of my mind were at the time full of thoughts and notions careering recklessly from one lobe to the next, not stopping for warning signs nor pedestrians, and many of my more timid ideas had as a result decided to remain indoors, rather wisely. It didn't help that the entire city was over the legal limit either and was in no state to be in charge of a sensory motor vehicle.
Being a writer is, in my opinion, a despicable occupation, and I shall here lay down a few brief outlines as to why. I feel that one of the problems with the English taught in school is that it is all essentially meaningless, and the only use it is truly put to by those good at it is to satisfactorily out argue other children and give clarity and comprehensible shape to confused notions about their sublimated hatred of women. If I let slip in the middle of a dinner party that all love is essentially selfish and by that very nature self-destructive, and that even relationships knowingly based on corrupted principles which have blossomed into something resembling genuine love are simply a facade unperceived by its participants, and that if our most basic human instincts are exposed or heightened by the rawness of love, all will see the inherent cynicism of love beyond its immediate destructive physicalness, I will not be offered dessert. However, if a writer puts this down in the form of a parable then I am perfectly entitled to restate it and people will either look around awkwardly for a second before suggesting we serve the crème brûlée, or counteract this view with another parable. It is therefore a sure fact that a large percentile of published authors chose their career simply because they were sick of not getting any pudding at dinner parties. But more than this, it means that there is such a wealth of differing views on any of the major subjects covered in an average secondary school syllabus that anyone can prove just about anything with literature, and it ceases to have any larger significance when considered in the context of what you think the author means, not what the author means to you. But my biggest problem with being a writer stems from my own inability to feel genuine when writing about a subject because I write about it solely from the context of being, by grace of my occupation, an outsider; and my inability to feel genuine about living because I approach any emotion or situation with the subconscious thought that it could make a good story.
For instance I once wrote a intendedly humourous article for an online magazine, entitled '10 steps for disposing of unwanted bodies', and afterwards felt that not only had I written on a subject about which I knew nothing, but I had portrayed a false image of myself, the author. However, they say that time and experience are the greatest tutors and as I stood in the back garden of another man's house at 4 o'clock in the morning, franticly trying to get some kindling to spark and trying to remember step 7, I realised that I had been completely genuine when I wrote that article, I had just written it in the wrong tense.
By the time the tops of the trees had crept back into the warmth of the Sun's caress, all that remained of the mysterious defender was not so much the quintessence of dust as it was an overcooked barbecue in the quintessence of a dustbin, but it was a beginning. By the time the tips of the garden fence were getting involved in the orgy of morning, I had burnt all of my clothes, wiped all of the surfaces I could remember touching, cleared away my cigarette ends, and put the entire court case out in the alley way for the bin men to collect. By breakfast I had haltingly managed to find my own house, dressed in an oversized dressing-gown, lime green trousers, a floral blouse, and one flat and one furry slipper that I had found amongst the man's possessions, and by elevenses I was rocking back and forth across the street from the back alley way feeling as nauseous as a fish in the desert, wondering why in God's name I left the dustbin, and trying desperately to reason where it could possibly have gone. "
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