The Inner Condition

Written from a café on the Asian side of Istanbul

What is it you treasure?

Because right now, looking at you, I think you love that cigarette more than I sometimes love myself. Your friend is spinning his wine glass like the answers to many of life’s questions can be found in that sanguine liquid.

I could watch a man smoke for days, especially if that man has deep brown eyes like polished stones and often  flattens his tie unconsciously as if it is second nature. I remember a while ago I read “Tender Is The Night”, which touched me so deeply that sometimes I still think about some of the words spoken by Dick Diver and my thoughts turn to swirls. I want to make you fall in love with my youth the way Dick fell in love with a girl gradually but surely. “You’re the only girl I’ve seen for a very long time that actually did look like something blooming…” Tell me about who you treasure. I write about moments and cigarette smoke but I haven’t an idea what goes on in your heart.

The couple beside me are on their iPhone 5’s and are sipping Mojito’s in Ball jars. I am sure they treasure each other, but I am sure at a moment of hesitation they would mistakenly put their expensive glass screens to the top of the list of Three Things I Would Want With Me On A Deserted Island.

Sometimes I watch you flip quickly between your iPhone and your Blackberry, fingers quick and tidy on small screens. A gracefulness I always lacked and I always admire every time I see you. The same fingers that clasped around mine in a “team-building” exercise that involved large circles and percussion instruments. We sang songs loudly and shot down burning shots of Tequila but I was too busy watching you slink into the corners of the room while also laughing at our favorite drunk coworker who spilled beer on the carpet and then shrugged dramatically with a smirk. I think watching you watch me could become an everyday hobby.

Trees glitter with crimson Christmas lights and I am wrapped in a black blanket drinking a well-done Pina Colada. These days, I am lingering so that my life does not become a racetrack and my bed does not become a pit stop. I can dream all I want but when I wake up, even I can’t control the desire that remains even after blinking out sleep from under my eyelids.

Somewhere it is evening time and the sun is setting, but here it is 1 am and I am sufficiently inebriated to write these thoughts from pen to paper. I am thinking and contemplating about many things, and I think I will linger a bit more before I ask for the hesap.

Here is my final thought, though: If I put your fingers to my lips, would they taste like cigarette ash? Or perhaps I know nothing. I am, after all, much too young.

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My inspiration no longer forms complete sentences; only fragments of thoughts, excerpts of my memories. Apologies in advance for the bits and pieces of writing that follows.

I just recently finished Hemingway’s “A Moveable Feast”, and there are two phrases I cannot get out of my head: belly-empty, hollow-hungry. Always think, feel, and explore on an empty stomach, Hemingway taught me. And if there’s anything I learned from his Parisian memoir, it is to regard my relationships with great care, for they are often fleeting and sometimes temporary.

I finished “A Moveable Feast” while taking a city bus through the bustling city of Istanbul. I will be in this beautiful country for another two months, and Hemingway’s words linger with me as I immerse myself deeper and deeper into the culture of the Turkish people. Never explore with a closed mind. Graciousness is key. And always, always dine on a very empty stomach.

I wonder if a soul can be belly-empty, hollow-hungry as well. What would be the cure for such a disease? Well, I am young, so perhaps I cannot be so sure yet. But tiptoeing across cobblestone streets and dodging loud car horns while grasping my friends’ arms, I wonder if I am already beginning to grasp the answer to my question.

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I was recently given some unsolicited advice about grammar by a well-meaning person who only had my best interests at heart. Don’t you love well-meaning people who only have your best interests at heart? They make this great big blue world go round.

In case you can’t see the bile leaking off your computer screen, I’m being sarcastic.

Now I’m all for opinions. You can’t read three paragraphs of this blog without tripping over a veritable landmine of opinion. If I’m writing about it I have something to say, and if you’re reading it…well, I’ve managed not to piss you off yet.

Advice? Bit of a different story. As I’ve said here before, there are about four people in the world I trust enough to take their advice. Maybe three. All right two. And when I want said advice, I like to think I am humble enough to ask for it. Having advice volunteered to me is akin, in my mind, to someone showing up at my doorstep unannounced, inviting themselves in, commenting on what a mess the place is and asking, “What’s for dinner?” I’ll feed you because I’m polite that way, but I ain’t gonna be “overjoyed by your presence”.

If you’re a particularly perspicacious reader, you might notice that I used two instances of quotation marks in the previous paragraph, but left the punctuation mark INSIDE one and OUTSIDE of the other. The lovely, generous, well-meaning pain in the ass—I mean “advice giver”–helpfully (annoyingly) suggested (told me in no uncertain terms) that the punctuation mark is ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS included INSIDE the quotation marks, so it is written, so shall it be, Amen.

I’m a bit of a grammar Nazi myself, but I think I would rather chew razor blades than correct someone unsolicited (unless they’re being a real jerk.) That aside, I know the damn rule and I think it’s stupid. Here’s a self-deprecating and hopefully disarming way to illustrate what I mean:

Joel said, “Brian, when you sing you have wandering pitch.”

Joel told me I have what is called in the music business “wandering pitch”.

To me, the period belongs in the first set of quotation marks but doesn’t in the second. That’s just the way I see it, right or wrong. I like the subtle discernment between the two thoughts and I like how “wandering pitch” looks separated from the punctuation mark. Like a red light on a deserted road at 2am, I choose to slow down and carefully breeze through without stopping. Unless you’re a cop, what does anyone care?

Ah, but there are people out there who are the WORLD’S policemen. They have their lives so incredibly together that they have a whole steaming pile of life expertise to share, and dammit they’re a-gonna spread it! They will make you less fat, more successful, less of a doormat, more self-aware, less married, more industrious, more, less, less, more, more or less, if only you heed their warnings, listen intently to every word they say and let them move you around their personal chessboard like a freakin’ pawn!

All right, the poor woman was just trying to help me, she wasn’t trying to become Vladamir Lenin to my Soviet Union. But you know what? I still can’t help but resent it, because I didn’t ask for it. I recently published an ebook and I sent it out to a bunch of people for free in exchange for an honest review. In that case, all bets are off. I solicited these opinions and now, good or bad, I have to be ready to listen. If someone hates the book and says so in the review I am completely cool with that. I’m willing to accept their opinion.

But I invited them to dinner, they didn’t just pop in. If I ask you over and neglect to clean the place before you come, you have every reason to comment on the housekeeping. If I promise you a good meal and serve Pop Tarts with applesauce on the side, feel free to call everyone you know and tell them what an awful host I am. If I asked your opinion, the result is on me. If I didn’t, volunteering your advice will not be, as they say in the life business, “looked upon kindly” PERIOD

(Full disclosure: I SO want to put another period after PERIOD. It’s literally hurting me not to. And yes, I know I ended that last sentence with a damn preposition!)

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I can feel the roughness of the all-weather pitch under my trainers. Tiny grains of synthetic sand bounce around my hockey stick as I slam it into the ground.  My shin pads stick out from the top of my socks. I can hear my team-mates shouting instructions and my P.E teacher cheering from the sidelines. And I am thoroughly cold and miserable.  I’m scared of the hockey ball hurtling my way, too, because those things could probably kill. I want to go home.  It’s way past home-time, but I am forced to stand in the grounds of the neighbouring school I chose not to attend, and play hockey against girls who seem absolutely savage. This is one of the many flashbacks to high school P.E that haunt me to this day.

I have never been athletic. I am as flexible as a frozen cucumber encased in concrete and I have the competitive spirit of a deflating balloon.  English and Geography were my favourite subjects in high school, I was good at languages, and I ‘just about managed’ with everything else.  P.E, however, would forever shun me and my ‘below average in fitness’ ways (a direct quote from my Year 9 report).  Between the age of twelve and sixteen, the two hours of compulsory physical education per week were, at that time, synonymous with eternal suffering.  I hated playing netball in winter because it was cold and I didn’t understand the rules, and I hated playing rounders in the summer because I couldn’t throw the ball a distance greater than a meter or see well enough to hit anything. No matter the season or the sport, I was rubbish.  For those two hours a week, I would find some way to humiliate myself in front of the Cool Girls. Once, I accidentally kicked a girl in the face during a warm-up leapfrog exercise and made her cry. I still feel bad about it.  Another time, I tried to detach the metal netball post from its base, causing it to timber a few inches from another student’s head.  Being small and light, I was the demonstration dummy hurled again and again into a squishy crash-mat during our Year 11 self-defense classes.  Oh, and there was the occasion when I put all my energy into throwing a ball to my team-mate across the school field but I let go too soon and it flew, sitcom style, behind me.

I didn’t spend too much time lamenting over the fact that I was terrible at sports. I understood that my skills in dance would always make me look like a cat on a tin foil carpet, and if I ever had to run for my life I would probably lie down on the ground and accept my fate. On sports day each year, my P.E teacher would grudgingly slot me into the often-forgotten discus competition where I spent five minutes chucking a rubber frisbee down a field before sitting on the grass for the other six hours and watching my classmates work up a sweat in the marathons.  If the weather was nice, I had a pretty good time of it. I was never trusted with the popular contests such as the relay race or the long jump, and that was fine with me.

Right up until the final week of high school, I stuck with P.E. Despite my lack of enthusiasm, I never forgot my kit, complained out loud, or made an excuse not to do a specific sport. For all my hopelessness both in the gym and on the field, I participated in the game even if I knew only divine intervention would stop me from horribly injuring myself. Nevertheless, the thought of changing from my school uniform to my shorts and trainers, grabbing a hockey stick and running out into the cold air will continue to horrify me. It’s been four years since my last lesson, but I still can’t shake that absolute dread of P.E.

ENDNOTES: Do check out my Twitter and Tumblr for jolly japes requiring minimal physical activity.

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I started smoking in October 2012. It started off as something I did when I was drunk and as a lot of my flatmates are smokers, it became a social activity. It still partly is. Whenever I am out, I find myself making conversation with strangers in the smoking areas of clubs or pubs and I really enjoy it. But I somehow found myself going out for cigarettes by myself, in the morning, in the afternoon and at night. I have tried to quit, like every smoker, usually when I get an awful cough, though at those times I usually buy menthol cigarettes because I seem to think they will make my throat hurt less. I do not know if that is even true, I conjured this idea in my head. Then when my cough heals, I go back to smoking non menthols. Since I started smoking, I have become so aware of smoking, I look at people on my way to university, I see them lighting their cigarettes, students standing outside the building, waiters having cigarette breaks outside of their workplace, even commuters walking and smoking on the busy Regent Street in Central London. Sometimes I look down at the ground and I see an endless amount of cigarette ends. Smoking is everywhere. I believe I am addicted to smoking, and I am annoyed. I do not have an addictive personality, I have never found myself making such a claim about anything. I recently saw a post on tumblr of the words ‘sad girls smoke a lot’ and it really jumped out at me because I have been feeling sad and thus, smoking a lot. I do not know if I smoke to have something to do, to put my energy and focus on something other than my sadness or for the social aspect, or reasons genuinely unknown. I do not even know how much I smoke. So, from now on, for the next two days, I am going to record every cigarette I smoke and what I think about while I am smoking in an attempt to understand my smoking habits. I’ve already had four cigarettes today and it is quarter to seven in the evening.

At about twenty minutes past seven, I was waiting for my laundry to come. I had eleven minutes to wait and so to pass the time I rolled a cigarette. I have been smoking hand rolled cigarettes because my favourite cigarettes: Vogue were beginning to put a dent in my lungs as well as my bank account. It was the latter I was worried about. I went outside and smoked my cigarette. I watched fellow students walk past me and I began to think, as if from nowhere, my friend Amber. I think about how she’s a friendship group on her own. I think about how close we have gotten over the last two semesters but I have not seen her since we went on a night of drinking and dancing that consisted of her and I. I already feel us growing apart already, I have not seen or properly spoken to her since early April, not for lack of trying. I feel it would be sad if we continued to grow apart in the following years of our university experience because I really do enjoy having her around. We are complete opposites who bounce off one another in a way that is complimenting to both of us. And while I have a lovely group of friends, I feel like Amber is a friend unlike the other friends I have had before, and thus I friend I need.

It is eleven at night and I have just watched Star Trek: Into Darkness at the cinema with a friend. we decide to watch the credits to the end, in an attempt to catch any extra clips that may be lurking at the end. They are very long credits and I decide to roll a cigarette while we wait. Eventually we attempt defeat and I spark my cigarette once we get out of the building. My friend does not smoke and disapproves of me doing so, but I do it anyway, partly to spite him a little bit. The cigarette makes me dizzy and some ash flies into my eye because it is rather windy. I did not need to smoke this cigarette but I figured that since I had started, I might as well finish the job.

It’s nearly one in the morning and one of my flatmates strolls into my room asking for a ‘rollie’ and I give her my cigarette paraphernalia, while she rolls, I feel like I should have one and so I roll one for myself and we go to the kitchen and smoke them out of the window (we are not supposed to smoke inside the halls of residence yet I smoke out of the window every day, I have only been caught twice but I have been fined £100 overall). While we smoke, she tells me about her frustrations with a boy she likes and we sigh at how the people we fall for seem to hurt us when they realise we have feelings for them. But she says she is glad to see me happy with the girl I currently like and I start to smile because she does make me happy. The conversation however, makes me feel a bit odd, what if this all goes horribly wrong? The cigarette makes me dizzy and I realise I am hungry. Instead of fixing a snack, I have a few sips of kiwi and lime sparkling water to curb the hunger because all I really want to do is sit on my laptop, surf the internet and write.

I had yet another cigarette at two in the morning, thinking it would make me tired and able to sleep. I was wrong. Three and a half hours later and I am still awake, smoking another cigarette out of the window. I end up reading some of my book in an attempt to sleep. It helps. I wake up at four o’clock in the afternoon and have a cigarette as  my breakfast, accompanied by my usual black coffee without sugar. I do this because it is habit. The cigarette causes my head to hurt.

I still have not eaten. It is eight fifteen in the evening and I just had another cigarette, due to lack of a better thing to do. I still don’t feel like eating. I have been feeling really sad today and when I get sad, I don’t eat. It’s sometimes the same when I am happy. And when I am not eating, I choose smoking as a substitute that I deem appropriate. I am going out drinking and dancing tonight so I should probably go to the shop and buy some more cigarettes.

I do not know how many cigarettes I smoked last night, at least ten. I have had five cigarettes since I woke from my slumber, hungover and generally feeling awful about my drunken actions. The first was my usual breakfast cigarette accompanied by the usual coffee and the others were not particularly interesting processes, I had to take a long walk into town with a friend, a non-smoker and at random. It is 16:29 and I still have not consumed any food today. I think I partly smoke so I don’t have to go to the effort of preparing something to eat. I don’t think I still have an eating disorder, I just find smoking to be a quick fix in place of food.

I just had my eleventh cigarette and it is 20:40. I cannot keep doing this because the realisation how much I smoke is bringing me down. It will not be the last of my day. The truth is, I do not smoke because it’s fun, or cool, or because I drink sometimes. I seem to have become dependent on smoking, it has become a habit, a hobby in a begrudging way. I have been trying to concentrate on studying all day but I cannot. I keep getting distracted by thoughts and memories and to keep away from these thoughts, I take a cigarette break. I am a sad girl who smokes and I am not okay with it, but I am not going to quit. When I was in therapy I learned that I did things, such as cutting myself as a distraction from what was really wrong with me. I am still sad, but in a different way to then and instead of cutting myself I have sex with people I should not be having sex with, but I have grown tired and weary of that, and I have met someone who has made me realise that i don’t actually want to do that with my body. I wish the same can be said for smoking before it grows into a cancer, but for now I am going to keep smoking because I am young and I appear to have fooled myself into thinking nothing will go wrong, that I can get away with smoking so much with no consequences, though I fully know otherwise.

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First and foremost, friends of the jury, I’d like to make this crystal clear: Never once did I intend to get away with my crimes. You’ve all looked over the evidence, whispered words of condemnations to one another with nods—Deputy director of investigations has pronounced of his ego more than loud. My fate is sealed, and it’s about time!

Deputy has spoken of me no longer as the infamous Splitting Hare, but now as only a “silly rabbit,” as a lousy criminal just like the rest. For it was only a matter of time before my “envy of the beautiful” (his words, not mine, of course) “would coerce [me] into performing sloppier and sloppier work, until I’d ultimately slip up and leave a rabbit trail of evidence leading straight to not only [my] red-stained hands,” but to a unanimous conviction: that I am, indeed, an animal with no earthly soul. As well, I must acknowledge Deputy’s clever statement that made newspaper headlines last morning: Caught at Last, the Unlucky Rabbit Foot.

I must admit, my friends, that he is quite colourful with words. Oh, if only he spent half the time he does coming up with rabbit puns on actually catching his crooks! Why… surely Deputy may then have reason for such a plump ego as his own.

However, I must make special thanks to him and his department for their numerous public, press conferences held on my behalf. His colourful words and contributions to the 24-hour news have pushed me right into the lustrous limelight of a movie star: The Splitting Hare. Now that will be a title to ring a bell throughout history! And how appropriate, too, as it encompasses my crimes right in the name.

Though, I should also make clear that I’d never intended to slice only the lips of beautiful folks. (Yes, by beautiful, I mean only pretty by flesh.) The media has portrayed me as a jealous, pitiful man who would literally kill for the jaws or hair or freckles of my pretty victims. Oh, how they’ve missed the true intent behind my crimes! (Indeed, there was some point to it outside of my own personal pleasure). That by abducting these “beautiful” though so shallow, egg-headed folks, and by slicing harelips into their perfectly pursed mouths, I was to give them back their existence outside of the flesh! Never once have the handsome had to work for what they’ve been given. Never once have the good-looking had a need to think or to feel. For them there has never been anything deeper than skin, nothing more felt than sex and the hot flashes of camera lights. And so I felt… obliged to bring them back to their roots, and make them live as humble a life as my own. I made them more than just a pretty smile. I made them human once more.

The media has circulated my image around the globe, and I must be the most famous man born with a harelip in history. There’s no shame in admitting that harelips are disgusting. I know this, you know this. I’ve been laughed at and nicknamed and talked to like an ugly bunny for my entire life.

It hasn’t been entirely miserable. My harelip has crafted me a personality. I am intelligent and flamboyant and a great cook and can identify insects and can speak three languages between my split lips. But do you wish to kiss me? Does any woman wish to bear my children and procreate as rabbits? Of course not! Because I’ve never once held a conversation with someone who will stare at my lips. Perhaps I wouldn’t feel so ashamed if others hadn’t given me a reason to be. They’re hideous, we both know it. By not looking at it you’re giving it more control than if you’d had just stuck your finger between its gap and rubbed at my teeth! Must I cut your lips in two for us to talk as two equals? Well there you go!—you’re now more human than ever, and we may share in the comfort of mortal flaws.

My friends of the jury, I would like to thank you for being here today. It truly is a momentous occasion. Since I’d first shaved off the upper lip of that loud-mouthed co-worker I’ve been waiting to have my feet pushed to the flames!

Do you have doubts? Of course you do, and that’s perfectly fine. But let me argue that if I truly wished to get away with such crimes, never would I dream of crafting a signature as distinct as my own. I could’ve simply sliced away at the faces of my victims to leave scars like that of a bear attack. I could’ve burned off the eyelids of those women to leave them wide-eyed with wonder at how quickly life can go wrong when one is not protected by money and beauty. I could’ve done all such things, but I did not. Instead, I signed away at their faces to look just like my own, nearly begging for someone to come question me.

Oh, how my face must be known around town! The only feeling worse than being stared at is being awarded no eye-contact at all. No one dared to be insensitive enough to accuse me of such crimes, the one with the natural deformity. No one dared use logic to see that I was the one with motive to turn this whole turn ugly. No one wished to be the one to hold a conversation with me about such a matter. The challenge of such a conversation would not be hearing my words between my evident lisp—the challenge would be hiding how hideous you believe me to be up-close.

For it is you, society, that breeds the criminal. I could never be who I am today if you did not portray the criminal as the anti-hero. As this trial has progressed, it’s only proved my point further: Not only has the name Timothy Shel now been heard around the world, but so has the entire Shel family—every detail of our past, every home movie evidenced of my family celebrating Christmas or the fourth of July. News networks have analyzed nearly every old school photo of me, showing the progression of the deadness in my eyes. From me smiling wide in the first grade, so utterly unabashed, before I came to realize not every boy or girl looked like this, to my high school years where it become more and more evident that I was growing ashamed of my rabbit mouth.

But it’s still such a wonder how things could’ve gone so wrong! No neighbor, no barber, no grade-school teacher could’ve ever predicted such a menace in me!

Do not let society fool you. People only see what they want to see, and nobody wants to see the hideous truth. I’ve made this name for myself, The Splitting Hare, to prove to the world that even I could be somebody—a criminal, surely, but a criminal is still notorious. A criminal is secretly loved and followed by society and the media as an idealized evil. We are what is hidden within us all, and when exposed it is glorious. I could never be loved as much as I am at this moment. I couldn’t wait to get caught and make myself a name. No humanitarian in history will ever be capable of my fame and notoriety. The only way would be to expose that humanitarian as a monster hidden beneath all that is visible. Because it’s a confirmation that there is no angel on earth, but only the human evil. And the evil is worth dying for. The evil is worthy of fame. For I’d rather die a parasite than die a nobody, and when I am to be convicted I will be no more guilty of self-love than anyone else on this earth. I am just as beautiful as I am disgusting, and I am more than a rabbit: I am Timothy Shel, The Splitting Hare.

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I like Kevin Bacon. I really do. I gave this show a shot mostly because of him. I gave it a second shot because he was in it. I watched the rest of the season…well, not because of him anymore, but out of a masochistic desire to finish the damn thing already. It stinks, he stinks, the writing stinks. It’s balls.
I don’t like making unsupported claims. Let me tell you exactly why it’s balls.

1.) The protagonist: Ryan Hardy. Ryan is a tortured, self-destructive detective with a drinking problem and a deep-seeded fear that everyone he ever loves is doomed to death. He’s right, starting with this stillbirth of a character. Every…and I mean EVERY…cop cliché is thrown together in a jumble of badness. Ryan plays by his own rules. If he has a hunch he follows it, FBI be damned. And he’s always right, because the writers prefer it that way. Ryan is too damaged to love. He pines tragically for the killer’s wife, with whom he had an affair but nobly dumped because she needed to move on. He’s tough and just and weathered and blah, blah blah blah, de blah. Didn’t Kiefer Sutherland do this same damn thing like, five years ago? Haven’t the Law & Orders, et al been flogging this dray horse for the better part of three decades? I get it, we love cops, and the more unhappy the better. But c’mon already, it’s been done and done and done. Kevin knows a good script. He was in JFK! Tell me he didn’t see the obvious cracks in this character by page two. Maybe he tried to throw the script in the garbage but it was so one-dimensional it just bounced off the can like it was a painting. He should have burned it.

2.) The antagonist: Joe Carroll. Joe is an Literature professor with an English accent who, after killing a bunch of young women in some convoluted homage to Edgar Allan Poe, masterminded this big old plan to escape from jail, kidnap his wife and child and relentlessly tweak his arch-enemy Ryan Hardy with the help of countless insane “followers” who live and breathe by his every word. Not since Snidely Whiplash has there been such a trite, obvious and all around ham-handedly evil character as Joe. He might as well be twirling his mustache over a damsel in distress tied to a railroad track. He’s supposed to be creepy and intelligent with some overarching plan that will blow the lid off the crime-thriller genre. So far, all he does is ruminate over his badly written book while consistently having his plans blow up in his face. Mastermind? Who puts a bunch of psychotics together in a commune-like house and expects everything to run swimmingly? By benefit of what, his English accent? His magnetism? He’s not magnetic so much as earnestly silly and unrelentingly over-the-top.

3.) The damsel: Claire. Joe’s ex-wife who was apparently so oblivious to her own husband that she was unaware he was secretly ducking out at night to buy a bottle of scotch and kill some co-eds. THEN she hops into bed with the detective who put her husband in jail because that always happens. And she has a darling boy with her killer ex, to whom she is about as maternal as one of those bare wire mother surrogates in that rhesus monkey experiment. Not since Laurie in The Walking Dead has there been a character who so inspires you to root for her immediate death. Lovely Claire, who although her son is missing and her ex-husband is trying to get his hands on her for a reconciliation/retaliation-fest, ALWAYS has her hair just so and never lacks time to apply eyeliner. Lots and lots of eyeliner. Unlimited eyeliner must have been written into her contract. She’s attractive enough if you think you should cast a vulnerable suburban mom off the Maxim’s Top 100 Hot List. Go back to soap operas, Claire, or just die already.

4.) The whole “Poe” thing. Whoever is writing this series obviously has a Cliff’s Notes version of Selected Stories of Edgar Allan Poe and they’re not afraid to use it. From “The Raven” to “The Fall of the House of Usher” to “Masque of the Red Death”, the quotes just keep on comin’. Stand-alone quotes with a wisp of hackneyed explication by the hero, adding ultimately to squat. Apparently the big, revelatory reading of Poe leads to the concept that “killing is natural”. That’s it. That’s the best they could do with one of the most original horror writers in the English language. A Poe Literature professor and all of his breathless students came up with the genius idea that killing is OK. Oh, THAT’S why people still read Poe nearly 200 years later! It’s all so simple! Man I should have taken American Lit with Crazy Joe, I would have aced that shizz! Come to think of it the writers should have taken that class too, and maybe a few screenwriting courses as well.

5.) The Followers. These are supposed to be a group of hard-core killers who manage to lead normal lives, known in their full depravity only to Joe. The problem is they walk around acting like complete loons. And dramatic loons. It’s like Psycho Beach Party meets Dawson’s Creek in that house. Everyone’s sleeping around, killing people randomly, crying about their feelings, killing people randomly, questioning why they dropped everything else in their lives to follow Snidely McBadactor, killing each other… They’re supposed to be psychotically dangerous, but come off as the kind of whiny navel-gazers Winona Ryder made a career out of playing circa Girl, Interrupted. And if someone at line at the store was acting as obviously insane as these people frequently do, six people behind them would have called 911 from their cell-phone before they paid for their hatchet and switchblade. Hiding in plain sight? These people (actors, writers, producers included) have the subtlety of a crazy, homicidal pie in the face.

Want to know the true tragedy? I watched the damn thing. I could have been listening to sports radio, or taking care of my lawn or God forbid writing a new play. No, I had to get wrapped up in this morass. Balls to you, Bacon, and your six degrees of horrendous.

ENDNOTES: Brian Petti is a playwright and author of the ebook “Sister Mercedes and the Temple of Doom” based on his Pettiplays blog.  The book can be found at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00C479TN6/ref=rdr_kindle_ext_tmb and you can read more about his plays at http://pettiplays.wikispaces.com/.

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Debussy’s Pagodas has been on repeat since Friday night. That night, I went out with friends in hail and snow (in April) to party at a frat house for one last weekend. This party was small, but I was still surrounded by alcohol and adrenaline-filled students who were dancing to decent electro music.

I stepped outside for a moment just to breathe some air, and I sniffed a little distastefully at the stench of cigarette smoke on my clothes as I watched the flurries fall on the cars parked alongside the street. Debussy wrote Pagodas after he visited Japan and saw the beautiful structures for himself, with their sweeping roofs that ascended upwards and then back downwards. I was thinking about this as I looked at the cars and their sweeping structures. I thought about chromatic scales, about beautiful music, about finishing freshman year.

I imagined playing Pagodas as a performer, and how I would linger at the top of the chromatic scales just so I could refrain from going back downwards and continuing my playing. Sometimes, I wish I had continued my piano studies just so I could finish playing a master work and hover my fingers above the white and black keys before turning to face the audience and bowing.

I feel as if I am in that moment in time right now – that moment of lingering, of contemplation, in which drastic change is occurring and everyone around me is watching. I am going home in one week, and I am already imagining how I will view everything around me differently. I am not the same person; I have not been home in three months. I see from a transformed perspective, and I think in an entirely new manner.

“Wow, you’ve changed.”

A friend messaged me this the other day, and I thanked him as I thought I should have. Only afterwards did I realize that I am thankful – for the friends I have made, for the confidence I have gained, for the new environment that I have surrounded myself in.

Standing outside of that frat house, watching snow fall in April, thinking about Debussy, thinking about freshman year, and thinking about change…I wonder if this is what I would contemplate if I were a pianist, and my fingers had just finished playing beautiful, sweeping melodies.

I wonder how much longer I will linger. I wonder how many more people will watch.

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In a perfect world we would have met the same way we met, but things would have gone differently. We would still have both been at an underground sideshow/wrestling venue, the crowd would have still been raucous and rowdy, we still would have been standing side by side. That perfect moment we would have looked back on as truly serendipitous was when our hands touched as we both reached to grab the same bit of candy they were throwing into the crowd. Our hands clasped together on a small plastic bag, containing the small brown sweet. We still would have turned to each other and laughed. I would have still given it to you, because your gorgeous brown hair and radiant blue eyes matched your pea coat, and you looked so damned beautiful I was shocked someone as pretty as you was even there. We would have still split the contents of the bag, which I didn’t care at all, all that mattered was splitting it with you. You still would have laughed as we both ate it, giggling as we both realized the strength of the fudge we both consumed, and its decidedly illicit nature. But that’s where it ends from our world and the perfect world.

In the perfect world I would have said something to you make you laugh, and we’d keep talking. After the show I would have asked you for your number, and later that night I’d text you. We’d keep talking and go out on dates. We’d grow very close, and I’d make the decision to move to the City to be nearer to you. We’d introduce each other to our friend’s social circles, we’d hit it off wonderfully. We’d love, and fight, and fuck, and make up. We’d talk about moving in together, we’d end up doing it. We’d end up together for years until I finally mustered up the courage to ask you to marry me. We’d get married. Our friends would cry at our wedding. Daniel would call you some terrible home wrecking, ball and chain, soul sucker. We’d all laugh. We’d all laugh.

We’d maybe have children. We’d hate and love being parents together. We’d watch them grow up. We’d get older. We’d complain more. We’d talk to co-workers and mutual friends at social events about how we met. We’d talk about how fortuitous it was our hands met grasping for the same piece of candy. I’d mention how beautiful you were then, and how beautiful you still are to me now. We’d get older. Our children would grow up. We’d be proud of them. We’d die.

But we don’t live in the perfect world, do we?

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Joyce Carol Vincent lived and died in London. Throughout her life she had family, friends and romantic relationships with men, all of whom loved and cared for her during the time she spent on this Earth, in London. This woman who had such a life, not just an existence, who even had her face broadcasted to the whole world at one point was found dead three years after she is believed to have died. She died alone, wrapping Christmas presents in her home in Wood Green. Nobody knows how she died and it seems nobody had gone to Joyce’s house inquiring about her absence. Her body spent three years decomposing in her living room and nobody knew. It was not even her family and friends who found her, it was debt collectors as the deceased Joyce had not been paying her rent.

The story of Joyce Vincent is one I find harrowing, it digs into my bones and brings me to tears because I can picture myself becoming Joyce. I grew up in London, it is my home. I consider myself to be a ‘Londoner’. My family moved to Birmingham three years ago, taking me with them and leaving London behind. I hated Birmingham. I found it too miniature in comparison to London. The city and its districts have a sense of community that made me feel uncomfortable, ambushed and captured. Though I grew up in a small town, I had the means to escape to the many metropolises of London that I adored. Camden Town, Borough Market, Shoreditch and Soho to name a few. These are places where I knew nobody and did not need to know anybody. Richard Taylor from Hull complains that people in London are “unfriendly” because strangers don’t smile or greet one another like they do where he grew up. Perhaps it is because I grew up here that I don’t feel the need to live a community-centred way of life. It is true that I feel it is the people who make London the world famous city it is, without people, London would be a wasteland. It is the masses of people here who give London its affectivity, its personality, its life.

What is it about London that brings people to her? I interviewed a number of people who have not had the London upbringing I had. I chose people from different countries, cities and towns in England. The people I chose were young people who made the decision to leave behind their families, friends; all that they knew to chase London. Twenty one year old Christina Reid left the ultimate metropolis that is New York City in search for an escape from the “constant competition” of the city. However, Christina chose to move to London as opposed to a small town because she was so used to “living in a metropolitan area” and did not wish to fully leave what she “was comfortable with.” Christina also feels that “you can literally be whoever you want here”, an attribute she surprisingly found lacking in New York City. I have never been to the City of New York so I do not feel I can comment on individuality there. However, in Birmingham, the second largest city in England compared to London, I share Christina’s sympathies in the loss of individuality in a city, where being whoever you want to be is not embraced by those around you. Nineteen year old Gergana Krasteva from Sofia, Bulgaria was also inclined to move to London in search of people who had a different mentality from the ‘close minded’ and ‘judgemental’ people she was faced with in her home city. A memory that sticks by me is being at an LGBTQ Pride parade in an area of Birmingham City Centre known as ‘The Birmingham Gay Village’ with a friend of mine. We were wearing dresses whereas a lot of other gay women we’d spotted were wearing baggy jeans and shirts. An older woman we do not know walked up to us and called us “straight acting baby dykes”. We felt isolated, and not in a gratifying way. We stood out and because we did not look or dress like the majority, we were made to feel like we do not belong in a community that claimed to embrace the differences of people, differences that were not accepted by the majority of the world.

Gergana Krasteva said that “London is nothing special, it is just another place to live” and she is correct. There are plenty of other cities in the world that have beautiful architecture, a complex underground system, and people from all possible walks of life. My interviews taught me that just because someone from a much smaller part of the world or country has chosen to disappear from all that they know and replace it with the unfamiliar City of London, it does not mean they are as in love with London as myself and others, or at all. Samuel Napier from Dover thinks of London as a city of opportunities for himself as a musician. He came to London in search of people, specifically musicians with whom he can “collaborate for the good of art”. Despite having reached his career goals, Sam tells me he “feels isolated here. It might just be this area but there seems to be no community in London. I miss that.” Sam and I are opposites. He misses the community aspect surrounding Dover, whereas I do not miss the communities of Birmingham. I do not want to live in a community. I crave isolation and personal space. London gives me the opportunity to be as anonymous as I wish.

I fear I will die in similar circumstances to Joyce Vincent because of this. I moved back to London by myself, leaving my family behind. I go weeks without talking to them, it does not occur to me to even text them and they begin to worry about me. Just like Joyce Vincent, I have friends and flatmates who care about me. My problem is that I easily become exhausted with company and yearn to be alone. And I give myself what I want. I take myself out, I get on a train and I lose myself in London. I immerse myself in the cultural offerings of this city. I meet people I will never see again and give them a fake name, I can be whoever I wish here, and I am.

I have accepted that London is just the beginning of a life of isolation for me. A number of the people I interviewed expressed wishes to get out of London after their studies are over. Not in search of a smaller community and a home, but to isolate themselves from all they know even more than they already have done in search of success in their chosen career paths, for places that would offer them more opportunities than London can. Eighteen year old Brendan Byers from Newmarket, Cambridgeshire has hopes to penetrate the film and talent industry in California in four years’ time. He tells me. “It’s a much larger industry there, I think I’d have a better chance of making a name for myself. London could help get me to America, Cambridge cannot. That’s why I’m here.” I envy a boy two years my senior because he has a plan, a path for himself and I do not have any idea what I am going to do with my life. I want to be educated, to travel and most importantly, to write. I adore London but I know eventually it will lose its spark. I fear I will grow tired of what I know and I will soon have seen everything she has to show me. Like a person with a fear of commitment: I will always want something new sooner or later. London is my wife, she’s beautiful and has everything I want. Yet I cannot resist the urge to cheat on her with other cities in the world, in search for wonders I do not know of.  After all, London really is just a place, a place I’m starting to think I’ve seen too much of.

I envy Brendan for having his life planned out on some level, but at the same time I can’t think of anything worse. Though he would be isolated in California when he moves there, he actually plans to settle himself down there, to have a home, a life, friends and work. Eventually, his whole life will be in the place he moved to and he will no longer be isolated. I don’t want to have my whole life planned out, by myself or anybody else, and that is why I came back. I want to lose myself, to be immersed in the world. But for now, London and learning will do. But London is not enough for me, not anymore. I need more anonymity. I believe this is because I am ‘settled down’ in terms of the life I lead, something that most people seem to want, I do not understand the need for such a monotonous life. I wake up, shower, get on the tube, and go to university, go home and do it all over again the next. This was a choice I made myself and it is not one I regret. But the current and impending routine in my life sometimes makes it near enough impossible for me to get out of bed, because it is so very monotonous.

However, when I walk through Oxford Circus in the morning, afternoons or evenings and see all the people, the architecture, the buzz; I feel much better. I am anonymous again. I am a face in a crowd. I am in London and I am alone in an accumulation of people and noise. I am lost in my home.  This yearning for loss is probably nothing to do with London, I have just spent a large portion of my life using her to embrace my own feelings of isolation and loneliness and now that is what I associate her with. That is all I want from her in all honest. London is full of people, but people I do not know. People who do not expect anything from me, people who do not hurt or bother me, people who give me the space I want without questioning my need for it. I realise now that I love London because she gives me what I want, when I want it. I can revel in her and be as selfish as I need to be without any reprimand, which would be the case with actual human beings. She really is my faithful, doting wife. I can, I will leave her but when I return I know she will be right there waiting for me, welcoming me back with her vibrancy and beauty. I don’t need a community or a home here, I came back to escape exactly that.

My hatred of community and familiarity will most likely lead to my downfall, or I will grow up and end up ‘settling down’ somewhere, with a real person, maybe a cat too. It is most likely the case that I will not die in circumstances similar to Joyce Vincent’s; that my feelings will alter, that I will stop folding in on myself and eventually find what it is that I am seeking in my wanderlust and thirst for isolation. But right now, at this point in my life, dying alone and in London – however morbid this may sound – is how I see my life turning out, and I feel indifferent about this possibility. It is a bittersweet thought, but this is what London means to me. It is a place I have so much adoration for that dying here is enough for my soul to be content. Some people want community and work, I want contentment, and right now that is isolation.

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I get it. We’re done talking about the biggest boyband currently on earth, One Direction. I know, we’re done. They’re overexposed in the media not just with their music, but with companion books and calendars. CALENDARS!

But, guys, I really can’t stop talking about them.

If my sixteen year old self had known this, she would be embarrassed and cut herself from the Internet to avoid this from ever happening.

My teenage years were spent listening to the underground/scene/indie/what-have-you pop-punk music from The Graduate to The Starting Line to hardcore bands like Finch and Brand New or indie experimental fun like Anathallo. And there’s The Smiths and The Clash on the sidelines. But because these bands are either on hiatus, disbanded, or teasing their fans occasionally of their existence (staring at you, Brand New), I feel like I’ve left a part of my music snobbery behind some three years ago after I left university. I lack the time to discover new music and the zeal to be incredibly passionate over waves entering my ears, mostly because the things I was familiar with no longer exist to create new things for me to consume.

But then, One Direction entered my life, and the love I once had for music came back.

My relationship with One Direction began when someone left me an ask on Tumblr about my opinion of the group. I’m cut off from popular media like television or radio, but the search bar on YouTube provided me an access to these five fine lads. Because I thought it was funny someone would even ask me about One Direction, my initial fascination for them oozed with the sweet taste of irony.

But… I did not dislike them.

The catchy music and the fun looking personas lured me in first. I justified their tan-for-English-slash-Irish-boys as an appeal. But fuck, the more exposure you have to something you don’t hate, the easier it is to fall in love. This is unlike any relationship I’ve had with a man before, mostly because this One Direction relationship I have is one-way, and I can shape it with the willingness of my imagination!

Part of the appeal for me is that they’re not your usual clean cut boyband. They can sing, yes, but that’s always secondary when it comes to popular groups. The space between “like” to “slightly obsessed” is not limited to just listening to music. It’s more than that. While boybands of the nineties and noughties wore the same colour on stage or in photoshoots, One Direction members applied a messy yet socially-acceptable look akin to any other guy I’d see as I walk through hipster laden streets in any city in the world: tattoos, shaggy hair, suspenders and well-cut blazers. Even if they’re wearing the same colour, each and every member has a distinct style that emphasizes their individuality while still being a part of the group.

It’s the same image appeal to The Spice Girls.

More than that, these are boys who are openly perverted and funny, topped with amazing hair. Elvis’ hair has done nothing to me, but Louis Tomlinson’s quiff is like sculpted beauty. God damn, cover that hair with a fig leaf!

Coming from a background of over nearly fifteen years loving rock music, this shift from indie to liking a popular band may come a bit strange to some people. My friends have certainly questioned my liking and even pulled me away from a music store (they still exist!) when I gleefully observed, “Ooh! One Direction stickers!”

The realisation I got from how much my friends care about my obsession signifies that there’s a quirk to me that’s not in line with what One Direction stands for. “Indie” is the word my friends have used to describe me, and “indie” is not what One Direction is. They’re a manufactured product of a reality television show where their image—which I incidentally like so much—is controlled by stylists and managing bodies to create an appeal so young girls would continue to buy any products with their face plastered on (Stickers! Calendars!)

But the thing about my indie behaviour has to do with liking things, too. Every single thing in my consuming behaviour and the image I carried was a conscious choice when I was a teenager. I loved rock music as a teenager (and I still do!) because I identified with them better than popular music. At the same time, every single thing I created myself to be—from the band t-shirts to the side swept bangs to the studded bracelets—was formulated to create my personal identity. It took a lot of care to make sure that my hair and spectacles were as Emo as possible. Eventually, those conscious decisions turned into a trait that I cannot let go, which eventually transformed to me just liking things unconditionally without thinking, “Will this communicate to people I don’t know what I am?” Everything I did went from calculated determination in concocting what is me to doing things imperviously by simply liking things without caring what others have to say about it. What I built for myself eventually became automated enthusiasm.

Therefore, my liking for One Direction is a part of the current trait I carry now. It may not be in line with the indie background I’ve absorbed, but it is in line with my personality box labelled “Just Really, Really, Liking Things Without Care”.

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It’s a strange feeling—to wake up in the highest of spirits with no such rhyme or reason to feel so, with neither a preceding brilliant yesterday nor a forthcoming brilliance for today, and yet here I awake in the highest of spirits.

I once was told that such a strange feeling as this morning’s is merely a telltale sign of something bigger, something beyond comprehension—a rippling connection between multiple, intersecting alternate dimensions.

Yes, that my happiness today could be explained by something brilliant happening to the Stephen in the 12 ½ dimension, which entirely takes place in the years between 3289 and 3302 when our planet ultimately crumbles apart—that is to say, when our planet Mars crumbles and destroys all hopes of re-emerging life (planet Earth had been abandoned and left to the bees back in the year 2565). And even within the forthcoming end of the world, this Stephen of the 12 ½ dimension still experiences a feeling so brilliant, so glorious, that it ripples and rubs off on me today: April 3rd, 2013. And this high feeling felt today may just be the connecting catalyst for the high feelings of the Stephen three years ago; and indeed, that may just be the catalyst for the high feelings of Kcaw Nehpets in the distant dimension of A.B. 101-45.5 when life does, in contradictory fact, resurrect full circle (and so forth and so on.)

Such a strange feeling as this morning is to be met with a tangled mess of mixed emotions. For I feel joyous by default, and this day just appears so God-damned bright!—but it all still feels completely out of my control, as if my optimism and love for everyone and everyone was merely induced by some drug slipped in my morning coffee. If only I could feel this way on such a proper day of my choosing, oh!

That being said, all these emotions become even more messy when I then start to feel upset by such an abundance of happiness. Yes, for surely the next time I feel upset by some small tragedy as spilt milk on a nice shirt, such a feeling will inevitably be perceived as all-the-more dark. Since, as my sister once said so simply yet beautifully,
“Everything is so good right now—yet I can’t help but feel scared.”
“But why are you scared?”
“Because when everything is good, the littlest bad seems so much worse.”

And so I’m to become disheartened by my happiness, knowing that the higher up my spirits go the farther my spirits may very well drop. And when my spirits do so violently drop, I can’t help but then feel guilty for the effect to all the Stephen’s in all the other dimensions. Because they’ll wake up to feel my misery and they deserve just so much more. So yes, sometimes it seems safer to simply keep all emotions forever grounded; that way there’s no hopes for high altitude, nor such fears of then suddenly falling.

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