The Plague & The Cure

My Plague essays are something that linger in my imagination still, and although I haven't had the ability to publish them in recent times, I refer to old posts and I appreciate the beauty and the bravery, the vulnerability and the insight. Each one staggers toward some sort of clarity in way that scares everyone else, and I often remember the circumstances in which I wrote them. I typed Desire Lines into my phone whilst in the basement of the Parisian club, Les Bains. When I finished it, I looked up to find a new group of strangers, poised to make friends with me. I wonder how many more friends I could have made had I stopped to look up once in a while.

I have attention span problems now. I can really see it when I try to write anything. I can't go a few lines before grabbing for my phone and checking things, researching, generally figuring out what the rest of the world is up to. When I read, I feel bad for not writing and when I write, I feel bad for not reading. My mind is a like failing hard disc, my heart is a tangled mess of cords. I sometimes revisit conversations in the knowledge that it's all extremely fragmented, and I grieve, knowing that between the two of us, I am the only one who bothers to remember. As such, I redirect my attention and make synthpop at a frantic pace, all sugary and hectic. I love it completely. I do it for my younger self. 

I often think Plague essays are essential, and they would cure me, but I wonder if my heart or mind is really up to it. I think of how I'd still give anything for his name on a screen. It's a slogan for my ultimate fucking cure, and I wonder if I could commission someone to catfish me and lure me into a state of artificial peace. I long for this ineffectual casualness, a dialogue which discharges the connection of all its electricity. It needn't be so electrified in my heart anymore. I want to see a cad for a cad, and to relieve myself of some grief. I've earned myself some relief after all this time.

Metamorphosis

It's been less than a week since I've had my desk. It's a cramped space, almost comically so. The yolk-coloured chair backs onto the wardrobe, which you cannot open unless the chair is tucked in tightly beneath the desk. The power points are located a few small centimetres behind the tin filing cabinet and any attempt to plug in a charger is fraught with difficulty. Doing most things in my new room is difficult, but I'm overwhelmed by the novelty of having a bed spread or indeed, a bed without someone above me. I unpack my belongings and stick up drawings and a postcard from my friend, Peter:

"The world is a magical place, where people build ball houses or hostels, so that people meet one another. Your soul walks in beauty and I'm very grateful to have met you!"

Every other night, I return to the hostel to pick up another suitcase and lug it back to Canonbury on the 19 bus from Bloomsbury Square. I furtively hope that someone over there will care that I've gone, make mention of a kind of love or a loss, but I know that other things are going on. It becomes apparent that they're making plans for a special goodbye dinner for two other departing staff members, but it's not particularly clear if I'm invited. When I made mention of it, we stood around awkwardly and my disappointment was evident. None of us really knew what to say.

There were lots of reasons why I stayed for so long. The dominant reason was that I had a fear of missing out. I wanted to document everything and I knew those who stayed would not properly report back to me. There'd be changes and I'd lose a sense of the narrative, the characters would change on me. Increasingly, I'd find that I'd have less of an idea of what was going on anyway. Going from staff member to guest, I found that my friends really didn't confide in me anymore. Conversations seemed trivial, rarely extending beyond the most flimsy and superficial.

I later realised that it was actually me. In addition to my frequent depressive fits and temper tantrums, I had stopped confiding in people. I instinctively knew how they would respond to my most persistent anxieties, namely, the expense, the terrible sleep quality and the frequent bedlessness at weekends. Their sympathy would be so limited that I just couldn't say anything.at all. I, more than anyone, knew the terms of that life. I spent days and months escaping, as far as I could for as long as I could, generating digital content that would suggest the most aesthetically fantastical existence.

I may be loved, but will I ever feel that love? Probably not, no. Yet, Peter's postcard hangs in front of me, it's evidence claiming a warmth and a regard. He's not the first guest to say such things, but I have never been able accept it for whatever reason. It's simply not consistent with the narrative I have running through my head: I loved and I lost, they left and they forgot. You would never know how much I love by the amount of time I spend on my own, but I'm fine with the isolation now. I'm happy to render it all, now that I'm here alone.