Universe

In the song Around The Universe, by The Beatles there is a section at the beginning that speaks to me. One of them says “You all right richie?”. Every time I hear it, it makes me smile.
A lot of the time I think about what it means to be content. To have that mantra of enlightenment run through me. A lot of the time I need that smile it gives me.
Contentment is being ok with yourself and everything. Utterly unchanging. Nothing is going to change my world. Except me.

House

When I got here, when I off the train, walked the long walk to the front door, when I turned the key and stepped in, my heart faltered and the beast wriggled in delight. I felt like I was opening the box of the world’s ills. If I had a choice I’d shut the lid and leave it here forever. Home is so sad, is what Larkin said ‘shaped to the comfort of the last to go’ well in this case, it isn’t. Its shifted furniture; moved in new televisions and hi-fi’s; the doors open differently; some doors are locked; my room is nothing more than a music studio. I feel like weeping for that now disbanded ‘joyful shot at how things ought to be’. Gone is the home, this is the house.
I’ve tried to think of where home is. Where my heart is, or longs for. I love Bath, but it isn’t a home. This is a world of sorrows and I’m a wandering kid without the wanderlust to enjoy it. How do they know how I feel? These people who tell me that it’ll be ok. If they did; they wouldn’t lie to me, they’d understand that the longer I stay here, the less ‘here’ I am, the more ‘elsewhere’ the more ‘anywhere’ I become. There is only so much absence you can handle, before you start to fade physically.

Starting

We first learn of love when we call it a name, someone’s. That is true enough, but we also first learn of pain because grief strikes where love struck first. We walk with open wounds. Love has never been easy for me. It’s like faith. I could never believe in a god because I couldn’t fathom his intentions, his designs. It’s the same for a girl who likes me.
Lord knows what she wants, why she wants me.
Yet nowadays I’m catching a glimpse of splendour when I just close my eyes slightly. That way that on long car rides, you squint until streetlights burst into stars. I’ve just stopped thinking and I’m starting to live. With life comes love, which means it is a natural thing, nothing to be feared. I still get stuck on how like death it is, but I don’t want to dwell on that.

Clara

I met a girl today called Clara. She is the same height as me and has short blonde hair that is feathered and light, so that the faintest movement sends it rustling.
I met her in the library while we queued up. She had taken out a load of travel guides and I told her that I’d go with her to Prague. She had no idea I was deadly serious.
She waited at the exit until I was done, to say goodbye. I think she wanted me to ask for her number, but I’m not really looking at the moment.