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[06 Jun 2008|03:49pm] |
U2 have nearly finished their next record. To think it's been four years since How to dismantle an atomic bomb. That record first hit me on a daytrip to Ypres. It seems like yesterday, and yet it's four years ago. For years. I'm four years older, but did I take anything from that day? Did I wise up? Did I grow up? That rain lashed me like daggers, waves crashed like bombs, in sensory overload did I lose a piece of my youth? Or gain a chunk of maturity?
Who knows. Today is raining, just like that. In September, I will definately take some journeys, personal and physical, emotional and spiritual. It's all a question of not knowing where you want to end up, or with whom. I certainly don't, but I kind of like uncertainty at this point. I was never one for done deals.
Maybe I should go back to Ypres. I liked it. It was a beautiful ghost, of a former town. Rose up bursting colours and flowers for the fallen, blood and bone, concrete and life absorbed. I loved the church. I want to go there with someone. Do I know who that is? I don't know. Sometimes I think I know her, sometomes she's never met, no regret, no kiss, no sadness. And yet no memory achieved, no ecstatic return to heart beating. With that comes comforts, certainly. I'd say I always wanted to take her there, if I knew who she was. Perhaps she exists, perhaps she doesn't. I am deliberate in my vague text. I like it. The Menin Gate, the cafe', the coach, the lovely coach trip home through that black night, rain beating the windows as I fell into reveries not since achieved. It's a little fun not knowing, I wish I didn't know so much now.
I like this. I was starting out an update, which i'll do later, let's just stick with this while I have the flicker of writing in my fingertips.
I wrote three pages of diary about that day, let's call it a retrospective, shall we? The reason i'm thinking about it again, is today's rain evoked it. I haven't felt or sensed much in a while; my heart has been cloaked in a dark shawl. No senses, I try to smell the air and take in the sound of trees but it's like my soul is blocked up. Today, for the first time in ages, I felt myself unequivicolly surrender to the elements. I think they're punching through that boozy fug i've been steeped in too long. For a while I could get away with it, because in 2004, I did some of my best writing. But now, the booze has caught up with me, and nothing is felt without a fight.
My talent is taking these things and giving them life and colour, to applicate them in such a way that the reader can feel what I feel. I am often in mind that in the past, i've been able to push certain buttons in people who read it, in a myriad of ways, and I thrive off this with a great energy. To know you can touch someone, not physically, but inside...that you can puncture a heart, a gut, and a head with a vibrant piece of wordsmithery is brilliant. It's a thrill.
I often feel like i've lost the ability to do it. I haven't. I just haven't had a lover, a big trip, or an epiphany in a while. I can still very much do it, and I will do again. If I can give up drinking so much alcohol, I can do pretty much anything. I am entirely convinced that I am awesome enough to do anything I want.
Anyway, here's that day, in full, amongst my normal daily updates. One of my favourite entries ever, from November 2004.
http://www.blurty.com/users/zoomeister/day/2004/11/11
Like I said, the reason it came back to me (Before I started wandering down a different path) was the rain, the sense, the slight mellow feeling I have today. It's not that I wish I could write about it like that, I want to write about another day like that. And I will. That day every single fibre of me felt every single emotion possible. Residual melancholy, fatigue, excitement, sobriety, all ringing in my ears. I traced the names of the dead and missing with my fingers, and I murmured promises to myself to never take this gift for granted. In the soil, no longer do hearts and lives have that chance. In the great marble arch stretched about me like huge white arms, I found myself actually becoming a man. I didn't know at that point quite how much of a man I was about to become.
What a day. What a sobering, strange day. I so want to go back.
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