Lazy from C-Z

A bloodied angel lies roadside near Chiswick High Road just as I was walking past. The weary soul took no notice of me; its gaze locked shut on a faraway front, July weather and all. If only I can look away. The sheer amount of effort it takes to feign normality under strange circumstances allow me to dwell upon mine own weak determination. Five minutes I thought of nothing and dragged my feet forward heavily one after the other, and only finally then she was gone, out of sight. What strange circumstances would I have landed upon had I chosen to take a path clearly less taken. No soul in that moment would have stopped to think to notice. I did, if only for a while. Saving stray cherubs are no work for the likes of me. Certainly not me. Obviously not me. Leave the strange to the strangers.

Time has slowed me down drastically. I feel my mind slowly deteriorating with every ordeal, every heartache, every bad news the mainstream media is willing to construe as truth. Truth seems to be conflated with reality most of the time. These two concepts are not mutually exclusive, though the similarities are deceivingly very familiar. The situation at home is far from the ideal view I have of it. Miriam and I continue to have relatively minor squabbles over mundane tasks or experiences, albeit no cause for concern as our past infractions. Our challenges are mostly financial; me having to struggle being parsimonious while she struggles as usual to remain stingy. The only time I have ever gotten peeves over her spending was what I feel to be her struggles with smoking addiction. The constant need to supply herself with tobacco, purchasing a pack each and every time she visits the an off licence, at the risk of eventually running out and driving her to madness, while my advice fall to d...

It is a rather dull affair to bequeath our day-by-days to the uncharted new world of pandemia. Not long ago it was but a fleeting sentiment to want to be free; free from work, from responsibilities, free from the interference of external stimulus. Now the contrary is a rather permissibly more desirable outcome. This uncertainty offers us no reprieve. We still have to crawl somehow back to reality. And in so doing would punch us with the realisation that our woes have never parted ways, it resumes, accumulates over the absence of attention. The payback is intense. It is going to be a sordid affair, one that we had thought relinquished upon the onset of this persistent outbreak. If, by any chance, a miracle struck me down from where I currently sit  and bless me with redemption or solace, my gratitude, which has eluded me for the longest time now, would be most appreciated. It has taken a toll for the lot of us, and it is indeed so banal that my teeth gnash at the memory of it, sight...

Dear Miriam, Things may be very difficult for the both us at the moment, and I may not show it at all, but that doesn't change the fact that the foundation of our relationship remains steadfast in my heart. You did what you had to do, regardless of my feelings towards that. I do not wash myself of any wrongdoing. That was pretty much evident through our final interactions. I would love to apologise, although I very much doubt that means much now if at all. I wish you well and wish you nothing but the best. My days without you will be long, and it will remain longing for quite some time. You... were the best thing that came into my life. You completed me, you complemented me, and you wound me. Perhaps it was my fault all along, expecting too much from you for too soon. I failed you. But for every fail, together we both had ten times more success. Do not neglect that. Do not forget what made us special. We did not have much in common, for sure, but we didn't define our...

I failed her. Yet again. And now I am afeared all may be forever lost, for the second time for me now. Could not sleep. Thoughts flood my mind like a crashing wave, each sharper than the one previous. It hasn't been that long, but every minute already feels like a ten-tonne truck pounding on my membrane, waiting for solutions and answers, wanting regrets and misery to pass me by. There is no passing by with this. Not anymore. Miriam is gone. I think it's for good this time. I did something earlier today that I never would have done if it were otherwise. To open old wounds, not right now, I thought, but, I said to myself, to hell with it. It had been quite a long time, so I searched for Mioseon in Facebook hoping to peek at how her life had fared since we parted. At the beginning, I would have reckoned she would use the nom-de-plume that she previously used to totally distance herself from me, I suppose. A shame. Meeting Miriam had made me lose thoughts of her completel...

Both me and Miriam have now leveled up our lives a bit better and, let's just say, more economically stable than ever. I can not help but wonder though at what cost all of this is to our lives and will it all be worth it? The only reasonable explanation as to why I drove Miriam into this insanity was my own selfish desire for a better life for both of us, although there are times when I truly doubt my very own self-worth. I despise how this all came about, though to be sure, I am very thankful for the opportunity. It had been a rough patch for us both due to my incapability to provide my share of responsibilities in this relationship. Miriam is hard carrying us both for almost since she came here, and if it were someone else, I would have surely found myself kissing dust once more at a bushy hedge at Hyde Park, away from the prying eyes of the judgemental and temperamental hoi polloi and the likes. To think that most of the issues that plague me at most workplaces I have been ...

Some things in my life are doing really good right now; so good, it's suspect. I smell a tragedy brewing in the background; waiting, brewing, gesticulating. I am scared but I am ready. My holidays starting tomorrow will be quite something then, if nothing else. Actually, someone else's holidays of which I merely am riding with their coattails on. But the real story is how the development of absolutely nothing has become the motif of me all of a sudden. This is my third pilgrimage now. Once, when all was lost. Second, when thought of love was found. And, finally, when hope reigned me in after thinking all was lost. Of course, I am still that same old. It has been years long now since the first. I had to convince myself how terribly repetitive I really am. The joys of being mediocre at best.

Dark, darker, darkest, there is no difference. All hurts the same. Pain, everlasting, lingering. Pain, day and night. The hours are uncertain. Anything can happen now. Thinking about it hurts. Truth is unreliable. The romance is dead. My heart, it is lost. Unrecoverable, hateful, distrusting. Wishful, perhaps, but I have lost everything before and survived still. This one was special. So special. Embittered, the tip of my tongue tastes. The flavour of my life. Cuisine of kitchens unwanted. It burns, to the heart. I do not understand. I do not understand.

My important wishes always happen to fall on deaf ears, and now something really, really bad (that has already happened before) is happening to me again. Beneath all the charade of misleading coulrotic bliss is a sad sap of a man merely wanting a bit of trust from everyone around him. Yesterday's news was Mioseon all over again, and it has drained me of all strength. The worst really has come, and heaven knows I'm miserable now. So it goes without saying that the biggest tragedy I have ever undergone in my life is fighting for the life of my child whose face I will never see. The most perplexing event was having to beg over and over unknowingly oblivious to the fact that my words carry no weight at all. Mioseon had trapped me into a corner and made me complicit to a sin I tried very hard to disavow. Regardless, she had found a way, and judging from that experience, Miriam herself will submit me to the same torture all over again, guilty by association. For some reason ...

The wind was cold today, a Sunday, a proper start to September. We are within these months again. The road to the end of a very short year. A year for me where very little was accomplished. At the very least, compared to the previous one, this was a surprise blessing. Not without its challenges. Not without its pains. Miriam went to work an hour ago. We left each other at Starbucks after a mild break. I was trying to help her with the buses. She never seems to catch on with the intricacies of the public transportation. I let her know that the easiest (not necessarily the fastest) way to work is to take the 260 bus from across the street in our new place in East Acton and stop at the underground station in Shepherds Bush. From there, she can then take bus 94 going to Piccadilly Circus where she can easily walk to her workplace in Soho in about five minutes or so. She begged me to join her. I was still groggy and asleep at two in the afternoon. That seems to be our common waking...

Me sitting down in this room trying to write this piece is Dunkirk on wheels. The ticks and tocks of life going slow-motion and clockwise rotating beyond the control of mere clockhands, slowly spinning, spiralling, perhaps, out of grasp. I will never find solace for tonight's manic episodes, and I fear for the days beyond tomorrow; where I will end up, in what state would I be in, or how the game plays out, etc. The game with which plays over and over in my head. The game with which there is no winning nor losing. I will never know the truth, and probably it is best for me to keep these thoughts to myself. I have been in the past guilty of so many mistaken intuitions. The sky is darkening. No stars in the sky could mean rain, and that thought scares me so. The same rain that drenched my flesh from within the hedge I had taken for myself not too long ago. The same hedge from where I waited, and waited, and waited, and waited some more, for a miracle to happen. What if the mirac...

Voices of strange busybodies could be heard on the other side of the edifice. Elaine reckoned she recognised one of them. An old friend. Perhaps not necessarily a friend, or not technically a friend. A friend is a rare commodity for her these days. She could walk right past them and not blink an eye, but Elaine waited for a little bit more until the lot toned down. Having a group of opposites around her, poking her skin through their eyes, meticulously making sure she was an enabler who to them an abundant source of entertainment, was all the reason needed to convince herself to back away from the complexity of it all. Home is an awful lot more awful than this place though , Elaine thought, as she gripped her handbag tightly, hoping the ray of darkness from the moon would envelope her and shield her from the attention of the lonesome trail. "This would not have happened had you only listened to me, Elaine," complained Darco. "Half the people out there would skin us ...

It could be that if I had said no, my life would move on free from the cachinnations of random fury, but what seemed like a hopeless evening turned hopeful on the spot when the man on the other line asked her what I wanted to drink. Cocktails just are not my thing. They have never stirred a salivating thirst in me, but free is free and fireworks displays were promised upon purchase. So me and Andrea said yes. Was I happy that I stayed with them both? Hard to say. The Sunday roast we had dined a few moments ago had quickly digested, and then I was hungering for something else. I had zero expectations going in, only glad that I had found good pep. But good pep adds nothing to the occasion. I am unlike Mauritius over here, who appeared more predatory than a direwolf the first time I saw him emerge from the shadows in a separate hostel in Russell Square. It is my only deep regret of finding him again by coincidence staying here in Lord Southampton. It is really not in my best inte...

Bits and pieces of things long lost have started appearing out of nowhere all of a sudden. Memories of people, places, and thoughts associated with my belongings knock at the door waiting to be let in, never to be left on its own accord. I am to be the master puppeteer of this cerebral construct, of nightmares I wish were forgotten, of people I wish to rid all manner of associations with. Mother had surprised Miriam with a message for me. Of a very far-fetched idea on how to maximise my potential to become something which I totally am not. A preacher for a religion I have absolutely no faith of of all things. Perhaps as a way to once again fuck up and atone for the totality of my insufferable existence. Fortunately for me I now have total control of my destiny. Something of which has never brought me much satisfaction, in fairness, true, but still the freedom to be a clueless and monumental buffoon is much more satisfying than to be a scholar trapped in the confines of virility, p...

Dark days are behind me now. Those moments linger for awhile and never let go, but I have managed to rise above. Miriam and I have grown stronger in the process, perhaps unwillingly so. We both do have our separate and individual fears for each other. Most of what it is is unfounded, even petty and makes no sense whatsoever. We disagree on so many things and we have very little in common, yet here we remain and persevere, as if the fate of our lives rests on each other's laurels. Now we have rediscovered our love for one another. For most days, that is enough for me to know and be happy about. I was wrong to allow myself to be complacent, and yet I know for certain it will one day repeat, not just once, but over and over again. I was wrong to assume that she would understand me, in whatever it is that I do, without due explanation, because she loved me. That I took love as an excuse to be lazier than I already am, pretending it is a currency that I could pull out whenever it p...

Every morning I get a weird sensation of pain resonating out of my eyes, especially when my body feels it lacks sleep even though it doesn't. Eight hours is more than enough time for rest. This would be another day where Miriam is somewhat feeling more distant with me. As if the reason to move on from her would be the most backwards beneficial thing I could ever ask for myself even though part of me tells me I shouldn't. With or without her, of course, I will survive. But I like her. Truly, I do. The decision as usual lies upon her to decide for our fate. I will once again be in shambles, tattered even worse than ever before. The thought of going back to the streets was all too familiar. I would want to avoid such fate whenever necessary.  When life finally chooses that path for me in the future, I will be mentally prepared. But the state of my perpetual loathing will one day have to rid itself on its own. My isolation will be my penance, as it had always been, therefore, ...

I had recently adorned a vow of silence for myself with Miriam for no apparent reason whatsoever other than to suit my whim, and, regardless of the pettiness associated with this misdemeanour, I pray this will only strengthen us both in spirit for the coming days. The coming days are definitely not meant for one such as me. In the next few hours, not shortly before I am done with this piece, this vow will be disavowed. Miriam is sleeping soundly in my right, broken by the exhaustion that seemed to catch her unaware. This was not what she had prepared for when coming to London. This was not what I meant for her when I asked her to come. In order to alleviate the guilt of me making it more difficult for us both, I do what it is that I do best, and that is to love her hungrily and wildly. And some little bit of swag on the side to cure her state of frustration albeit temporarily. My days are long and yet wields very little. For now I do and take whatever I can, whenever I can. A ...

As though the wind may pass with golden steps from shallow graves, the warmth of her hands could not defeat January weather in England, proving that tests of fate weigh heavier than the insidious intentions of a warring tribe. Perhaps it is high time I engage in other methods more worthy of personal consideration. She left me in the cold when my reality cloaked in malady was in full motion, sweating icicles in the interior, punching my guts in gutsy ups and gutsy downs. She was my meaning. She is my void.

The long draught comes to a full stop. Birds fly left and right with her arrival, and the soft, fragile essence of winter finally comes full circle. Through Miriam I have reconciled with a part of my past and all its transgressions, despite the discomfort and the lingering ball of hatred swelling inside me still alight. Miriam has gladly imparted to me the gift of hope. The hope that something good comes for every ten bads that runs me over to the wall. She now finds herself with me, and occupying her time this day with her first proper day of work, and on Boxing day at that, two days after she had lost her handbag in Holborn station on the way home from mother's. I find myself worrying too much at the thought of her mind in stitches. This is not a very good way to start our relationship. Fretting over such matters now would only serve to fuel an unhealthy amount of longingness, of dependence, and of obsession. She does not need my constant meddling and pestering, and I need t...

Call it a burning desire to urinate on the system that we as people have established; status quo. Felt a huge fluctuation of anxiety when I finished this day earlier than what I would have thought or expected, and it was technically my first day of job (again), and huge surges of this same rhetoric came pouring back in when Miriam and I have not been having proper back-and-forths since yesterday. It was as if we had lost interest with one another just like that. Either that or I have been consumed by the same system of dependency. The bug that I caught long ago that ruined me to smithereens. The long-winding hours, that which I felt was necessary, was to be a time of reprieve and a time to catch breath. It turned out to be much more toxic that it should be, and it came to pass faster than it should and I now feel poisoned and abused by the thought of having allowed this in the first place. Tomorrow is what I would consider a real test of my endurance, when I work from seven in...