A Joint Decision: A Scene in Twenty-Five Sentences

He had stocked his mind with feelings where thoughts used to be. Feelings of disrepute; of insanity; of calamity and disaster. That is what writers do, of course, but she was still looking at him and he knew he had to say something. The cadence of their dialogue, perfect or otherwise, had silenced moments ago and a new sound - the sound of vacuous trepidation - had solidified around them, encasing them in that too-common atmosphere known by the youth of today as 'awkwardness'. Her stare was invasive, but he could forgive that. She was allowed to invade his mind because she was the one who created it - created, naturally, using leaves and stems and bits of broken bark.


Breaking the traditions that his relationship had taught him, he spoke first.


"We can never grow if we don't leave, Lucy. We'll just stand here, stagnant, waiting for the world to come to us. Your choices - your desires have made us this way; stuck with nowhere to go. The world waits for no-one, Lucy, and no-one waits for us. Haven't you seen how our friends surpass us? Haven't you seen how they move on to better things and we just stay here - stuck - just fucking stuck, going nowhere but down. I know that you struggle with change; I know that you're happy living the easy life, but there is so much more out there. We only get one chance at this - if we don't go now, we'll never go and we don't have an excuse anymore."


"Can I talk now?" came the interception.


"We don't have an excuse because we're stifling ourselves. We are giving up on living just to survive a little longer."


"Can I talk now?" the voice came again, with authority this time.


"These are decisions that we should make together; I refuse to remain content while you dictate my chances. I don't think I can do this anymore."


Assuming that meant no, she stood and took up her suitcase in her hand. In her other hand, he was astonished to see she carried a train ticket to the capital, where a new phase of her new life could begin.

Home: A Scene in Twenty-Five Sentences

Outside of her house was dismal. The edges of her garden were marked and plotted by trees - trees waving in the heavy gales, clawing at the sky with their extremities. She looked up from her coffee cup and began to wonder secret thoughts to herself when she heard a noise coming from the kitchen arch. Her thoughts, clandestine from all in her surroundings, were forced to surrender her attention for reality. A large, jovial woman had grounded herself in the doorway like a female Falstaff. The new figure offered a "good morning" to her mother and sat on the opposite side of the kitchen table, pouring some nonsense about the weather over breakfast. It was as if the air she expelled included a bit too much oxygen and was slightly too faint of the other chemical elements that could have made the mixture interesting.


She had refused to move away from home, claiming it to be too expensive, and proceeded to live in the biggest room of the house. Well, she was still young after all, and her mother didn't need so much space in her old age. Old people seldom need things that young people do. When a person reaches a certain age, they appear to give up a life of ambition for a life of reality. Besides, her mother always knew that she would move out when she could find a man to take her, but as the years rolled on, it was looking less and less likely to be a probable scenario. The women, though a generation apart, were growing old together at quite the same rate, it seemed, and they had become something of an indivisible force, prone only to give each other love and hold everybody else at a safe, dispassionate distance.


The house still felt empty to her since George died. Her daughter was more than adequate company, but there was always this voice in her head suggesting that she was a burden in her old age. "Perhaps she hasn't moved out because of me," she would often consider when alone with her secret thoughts, but it was unlikely. She had merely raised a young woman with enough confidence and little enough pride that she was able to stay in any living situation that made her happy, that's all. Her secret thoughts would wander down the most horrific avenues sometimes, but she often found she could resolve all else by telling herself that she was - that she is - a good mother. Her daughter, though unsuccessful, was happy; though overweight, was appreciative; though dreary, was good-natured, and that was all that really mattered.


There was a certain beauty, she always knew, in her relationship with her daughter. Though happiness can rarely be found in others, it can become apparent in their presence. Therefore, seeing her fat face chomp down mercilessly upon an unsuspecting croissant with no reservation whatsoever made her grin to the point that her thin, stick-like lips and her crow's feet became one; each indistinguishable from the other.


"Your father would be so proud of you," the mother remarked with her usual grace and reverence. Then she stood up out of her chair and walked, lightly humming, to the garden window, letting her secret thoughts blow through her mind like the disoriented branches of the stable oak trees that preceded her. She was safe; she was stable; she was home.

Diligent Indolence (and its Effects on Productivity)

News came in today that everybody's favourite billionaire, Mr Richard Branson, has introduced a somewhat postmodern attempt at individual productivity. His idea to endow his workers with unlimited holiday is an attempt to focus "on what people get done, not on how many hours or days worked". Perhaps, then, giving free reign to employees makes them care more about the job they do. If an employee has 8 hours in a day and a job to do, it is only sensible to take 8 hours to do the job; after all, that's what you're being paid for. However, in Mr Branson's method, the job will only take as long as it takes. It's a cut-the-bullshit approach to a problem that every company in the country must come up against and it works.


Now, this wouldn't be my blog if it didn't relate in any way to popular/literary culture, so it only makes sense that I explain the situation from my corner. A commissioned artist is given a structure - a deadline. It is unfortunate that it has to be this way because, as with the workers at Virgin, this can actually be profoundly inimical to productivity. An idea - a poem, a painting, a melody - is a spark. It doesn't last very long. It illuminates and then degenerates back into whatever strange surface it surmounted from. To pretend that it can be structured, or even recaptured, is deceptive. The artist often wants to play the part of the overworked, undervalued cultural dynamo that is a mystery to everyone barring his/her own mother, but most of them just aren't like that.


Creating something special is hard work but it never feels like it and, just like Mr Branson's incredibly lucky employees might indeed find, there is nothing wrong with admitting that if you don't add a brushstroke today, it won't really make any difference. Mr Keats speaks of this as 'diligent indolence' and who should know better about such things than the undervalued cultural dynamo himself? Working for the sake of working actually wastes more time than sitting in silence and watching the world go by. At least there is some kind of (albeit, pretentious) beauty in that.


It's good to be back.
Love!
Mike.xx

The Non-Partisan: A Scene in Twenty-Five Sentences

Brazen, bold and brightly blazed, our vixen sings a shrieking squeal. She exits the room with eyes ablaze, her skin seemingly sinking into the vacuum of her skull.



"Madame," the porter interjects, "why do you seem so sad?" Her beautiful, untainted complexion, fluorescent with inconsolable wetness, is pitiful, yet alluring. He seems to care but his eyes fail him as they slope towards her breasts. She covers them indiscreetly with her descending towel and wipes the cooling drops of dew from her eyes. Perverse nature unveiled, he quickly springs his gaze back upward to her face. "Is there anything I can do for you, Miss?"



"You can leave me alone," says she, "Just leave me the fuck alone."



Turning on her bare naked heel, she starts to run into an adjoining hallway - a run inspired by the way the women in movies run - and he turns his face away. This isn't the job of a porter, he thinks; this lady needs some other kind of help. As he starts to absent himself from the scene, the click of the lock behind him acts as if someone had put a fish hook in his nostril and pulled to turn him around. A man wearing similar attire vacates the same room. He is maybe ten years older than she, but his virility and determination is instantly comparable with the drama of her youth. She being gone, he looks both ways for clues as to her escape route. He turns to the porter for assistance and gestures an interrogative, yet friendly sign. The porter points straight ahead and receives a second semiotic gesture - a rudimentary thumbs up - from the semi-naked stranger. The perception of the stranger, whose dominant strides thunder with questionless self-confidence, obscures into the distance as his lover's had before him.



There is a feeling of emptiness in the hallways once more. Their relationship, however volatile, is, at least in the simplest sense, human. Once both characters have emigrated from his presence, the porter thinks about the importance of each action. How a small encounter can make such a massive difference to the lives of others. They may have only informed his story, but he played an active role in theirs. The thought enters his mind and then dissipates into nothingness - thoughts sometimes do that as quickly as they coagulate. Then, picking up his stride, our disinterested protagonist walks on, unchanged and indifferent, as a man who has seen everything, yet still knows nothing.

Seventy Springs

"It's better to have had your wish than to have wished you had,"


sings the dead, dancing Grandfather in Woody Allen's underrated 1996 musical-comedy Everyone Says I Love You. And it's true. We all must take our lives back. We've sold them for cheap distractions and split, incongruous minds. Since when did employers call the shots? I am certain that employees had rights once upon a time; employers would be in need of help, so they would employ people. Now people are so in need of jobs that the employers have the upper hand. If we all renounced the desire for a third television, a second car, an expensive flat and clothes for our animals (all of which are as unnecessary as each other), then we could regain that power over our own lives.


We can all have what we want much easier if we stop pretending that we "need" these unnecessary things. Regrets are much harder to deal with when we regret what we didn't do. At least if we do it, even if we regret it, we know we tried. It's better to have had your wish than to have wished you had. Mr Housman says:


Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.


And, surely, this is all that is worth knowing.


Lovely to see you again, reader. Do keep stopping by.
Mike.xx

Gender Fatality

"It is fatal to be a man or woman pure and simple: one must be a woman manly or a man womanly." - Virginia Woolf.


The artistic mind needs to be two things: honest and androgynous. It is this androgyny that gives the work of art its universality - its potency. This doesn't, as Mrs Woolf might suggest, only refer to the gendered mind, but a mind that can encompass all difference; a mind that is susceptible to the infinite idiosyncrasies of humankind as a whole. That is what sets Shakespeare apart, for example; his ability to understand and manipulate a multiplicity of human characteristics. I wish I had a mind like that; I yearn for a mind like that.


What I do know is that I have a mind that is attune to the written word. I often find it difficult to express myself in verbal conversation and yet I find it incredibly easy to sit down and write a coherent (if not self-indulgent) blog post. I've said this to countless people and, funnily enough, they often tell me the opposite; that their minds are naturally attune to the spoken word and the pursuit of any kind of stylistic writing is insurmountable. Funny how life goes, huh?


So, why is this Woolfian (wonderful word) idea of the androgynous mind such a big part of my own theory of what makes an artist? Because it is only through understanding others that others can understand the artist. Shakespeare had this talent and so few others have. I would argue that Bob Dylan had it; indeed, still has it if anybody ventures to listen to him anymore. It is a gift that comes along maybe only once in a century but it is undoubtable nonetheless. It is the one attribute that all of the great artists share no matter what their discipline or movement. They all found new, exciting, innovative ways to understand the human condition.


Another very artsy post. The next one will be about death or something to make up for it.

Happiness to you, reader.
Mike.xx

Advice from the Masters

"The reason advice is free is because it's worthless" - Michael Caine.


When I was just realising that writing was a career that I wanted to pursue, I decided to send letters to some writers that I admired for helpful tips and advice. Paul Haggis, the writer of feature films Crash and Million Dollar Baby, gave me two pieces of advice:


1) Write about questions that you can't answer and,
2) Write about things that make you angry.


At first, the advice seemed too specific. I thought that to write about things that made me angry was too much of a narrow field. I thought that unanswerable questions were impossible to make a story out of because most stories are resolved by answering the previously unanswerable question; if I couldn't answer the question posed in my own story, then who could?


But then I began to realise what both pieces of advice really meant. Things that make us angry engage us. As a writer, you can become enveloped in the story because you are writing about something that you really care about. It is not preachy to write about injustice. A man I didn't know threatened to kill me on the street today - there are some things that happen on a day-to-day basis that everyone can relate to and that (almost) everyone will create a collective consensus over.


Then, during my time at University, I read the complete letters of John Keats and Keats mentions a concept that he terms "negative capability". That is, the ability to write from a place of uncertainty. It describes how the artist can create something without the relevant knowledge of the subject that one would think necessary to do so. It was then that I understood Mr Haggis' first suggestion to me. The answer is never the important part of the story. Ever. The search for the answer is the part that engages an audience because it is that which everybody can relate to. In other words, it is not the artist's job to teach, but to communicate and to connect.


That's all for today, reader. Thank you for trawling through my (ironically) quite preachy writing yet again,


Much love to you,
Mike.xx

Fun and Frolics in Notting Hill

Reader! How nice of you to join me again. I thought I'd start by sharing a poem with you:

The carnival is underway - the city, fully loaded;
The streets that need a hoover are perpetually eroded
By sin and sweat and nuisance on these roads that are deroaded
And the idiots that play their hand when they know they should have folded.

In Notting Hill, there's thick black smoke; I daren't open up to cough;
It really makes one want to leave this dingy little trough.
And to all those noisy bastards with their brain cells all a-doff,
"I'm just a girl standing in front of a boy", asking him to bugger off.


Maybe I'm just growing old; the world's still young and sweet
And I cannot help but wonder if my mind is obsolete,
But as we Scousers know, for its not easy to secrete,
This anarchic pointless piss-fest's not a patch on Mathew Street!

Okay, so it needs work. It was rushed and I don't like to rush things that I write; it's why I always finished last in exams... Anyway, you get the idea. Notting Hill carnival has been held each bank holiday since 1966, so obviously somebody loves it. I, as I'm sure you can probably tell, was not one of those people. Walking through is like having a front-row seat to the place where degenerates go to just de-generate a little bit further.

Indeed, the premise of the carnival as an anti-racial statement is enlightening and even somewhat beautiful in a way, but that has clearly been put by the wayside in favour of drunken carnage and incipient boorishness. It is a shame that an event with such a rich and powerful history should be reduced to such ultra-Capitalist absurdity.


Or, as I say, maybe I'm just getting old...

The Real Language of Men

All art is quite useless.


There is a misappropriated notion that art is elitist. This is incorrect. However, like anything worth doing, studying all forms of art requires work and dedication. There is no reason why the average person should not be able to pore over the language of Eliot, Joyce or Blake and take just as much away from it - dare I say it - as Stephen Fry would. It is a question of dedication - nothing more. I find that often when people don't understand something, they have fulfilled their own pessimistic prophecy. Hand them a poem by Eliot or a painting by Matisse and they won't understand it. Why? Because they decided ten minutes ago that they weren't going to try to.

Mr Wilde, who famously attests that "all art is quite useless" is, in many ways, correct. He is not merely being his self-righteous, decadent self in this line; he is expressing a feeling that even those of us who are equipped with the utmost respect and trust in our art know to be true. When it comes down to it, art will not save Granddad's life, kiss your child goodnight or, unless you're very lucky, pay the mortgage. It exists in and of itself and it is perhaps this that some people cannot get their head around.


The elite classes, in fact, scarcely produce elite artists. Everyone from William Wordsworth, who strove to write in "the real language of men" to Oscar Wilde himself, renounced their claim on the elite to speak for the masses. This meant, of course, that over time the masses produced artists of their own. The biggest giants of modern music are arguably The Beatles and what were they? Young, working class, passionate. For it is passion that creates true art; it has little to do with class.

With Mirth and Laughter

There are still 6 people alive today that were born in the 19th Century. What?


In fact, the two oldest living people were born in 1898 and it got me thinking: I've never been close to anyone over the age of about 80; where are these 116 year-olds hiding? The oldest living Brit is Ethel Lang, who was born on the 27th May 1900. She is the eighth oldest living person in the world and, according to Wikipedia, she is the only living British person to have been born under the reign of Queen Victoria. The oldest person ever lived to be nearly 122 and a half and there are over 100 people that have climbed above the astonishing age of 114.


That's a lot of statistics, reader, and I do apologise. The question I think it poses, though, is how would one measure a life? If one gentleman lived for 70 years, and did as much in those 70 as another did in 110, has the older gent achieved more, or has he just prolonged the inevitable?


This mightn't come as much of a shock to some people as they assume that the whole world has an ageing population; people used to live to 80, but now they live to see 90 candles on their cake, but that isn't the case the world over. The global average life expectancy is still just 67.07 so these supercentenarians (people who have lived over the age of 110) are actually living the length of nearly two lives. I really don't know if I could handle that kind of pressure. I mean, imagine having to do all that shit that you have to do in life for twice as long!


If I'm still alive in the year 2100 (though doubtful due to my unquenchable love of cake), should I start planning my old age now? As Teddy Roosevelt said: "Old age is like everything else; to make a success of it you have to start young." But, no. What a waste of a life it would be just to plan the ending. A film with a great ending often lacks a coherent and engaging beginning. I say good for Ethel Lang but bollocks to old age! (At least for now)...


May everybody have a happy Friday,
Mike.xx

The Write Way to Read

I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia...


Says Mr Woody Allen...


But what I find increasingly alarming is the number of people that believe that they would sit down to read "if they had the time". There is no such thing as having time, nor is there any such thing as making time; time exists without us. I think what people mean when they say they don't "have" time or they need to "make" time is that they need to take control of themselves. Stop blaming time! It is doing just fine without you, thank you very much. We do not make time, use time, have time or lose time; time just is, as are we.


This might seem like a pointless rant and one filled with monstrous levels of hypocrisy coming from somebody that has spent his last few years as a "writer" not writing, but I don't blame anyone but myself for that and I am trying to rectify it now so there! :)


So, if you've had a copy of Eliot's Middlemarch of Joyce's Ulysses sitting on your shelf for five years to make yourself feel like an intellectual and you constantly mean to get around to reading it but you always make the excuse that you just don't "have" the time, then, honey, you ain't reading that book. They might be classics and, yes, they're classics for a reason but it is doing nothing more than perpetuating a ludicrous myth to pretend that one day, you will "make the time" to read Ulysses because you just won't. Of course, I am not saying that you should give up on your endeavours. Paint a picture, fly a kite, skip gaily in a naked, jovial prance through hoards of woodland nymphs and elven goddesses with mud-splattered script on your chest that reads "I'm a speedy reader", but, honey, you ain't reading that book.


And this rule, of course, goes for everything. How often do we tell ourselves that we will learn another language or start a business just as soon as we can "make" time. Let go. Enjoy the fruits of time another way and you might just find that time has been more friendly to you than you think. Either that, or you should have made time to read that bloody book! Your call, I guess.


Thank you, reader, and I will see you tomorrow.
Mike.xx

Review: Lilting (dir. Hong Khaou)

Only very rarely does a film truly make you appreciate the people that make life worth living.


That's right, reader, today I paid the exorbitant prices at the Curzon cinema in Soho to see the new Ben Whishaw film and, you know what? I feel like a better person for doing so. By that logic, it must have been a good film because that is certainly not how I usually feel after spending money.


Is a mother's love stronger than a lover's love?


Ben Whishaw and Pei-pei Cheng play conflicted parties with one thing in common: they are both grieving for the same young man whom they both believe they loved more than the other. Primarily about the power of love, Lilting achieves something higher by showing the darker side of love that so many other films fail to do well; that is, love as conflict. It is the love that both characters feel - Whishaw's character for his lover and Cheng's for her son - that actually drives the characters apart. It is not until they can truly understand each other's feelings that they can finally accept each other for them.


I cannot remember the last time that I sat in a cinema with an audience of maybe 20 others and felt the atmosphere wholly and completely reflect the mood of the film. The engagement evident in the participation of the audience was at an unprecedented level that couldn't even be bought for £13.75 (£13.75!!). It was a completely organic reaction and one that made the experience somewhat more realistic.


As ever, Mr Whishaw stole the show. His moving performance manages to avoid that saccharine, overly-sentimental shallowness that might be expected from a film with a bigger budget and, instead, he delivers a stunning, emotionally-captivating performance that hits the audience on a fundamentally human level.


Because above all, Lilting has a power. That is the power to insist upon its audience that we must all appreciate what we have. Nothing is perfect but love makes it so. For such an uplifting film, there is surprisingly little hope left at the end. Of course, it would be unrealistic to have the dead young man rise again and make everyone's problems go away, but I think that is the message. Life goes on and people are lost every day. Memories fade but the beauty is in knowing that we can appreciate things for what they are and for what they have meant to us. Okay, that was a soppier ending than I was expecting too, but if you have a spare £13.75 (£13.75!!), then this film comes highly recommended. Certainly above Saw 57 or Halloween 12.  Experience something that matters for a change. Experience Lilting.


Have pleasant dreams!
Mike.xx

Paying It Mind

Where do all the great sayings of the past go?


As usual, I spent some time yesterday listening to the genius of Mr Bob Dylan and I found that I have possibly become so obsessed with what he has to say that it now influences my own speech.


In 'Mr Tambourine Man', Bobby attests that he "wouldn't pay it any mind" and it got me thinking: when did paying it 'mind' turn into paying 'attention'? Attention is such a boring, frigid, military expression; one half expects its use to often be followed by an angry man shouting "Quick march!" Mind is so much more expressive and so much more personal. I can give you my attention and you will have my dutiful sighs and reassuring back channelling, or I can give you my mind and we can engage on a much higher, much more deeply personal level. As usual, Mr Dylan's way is, if not the best, at least the most human of the two.


But, surely, that is why these sayings shouldn't die out in favour of newer, usually simpler phrases. I am not making this point because I am a prescriptive old pedant who cannot embrace change; I think both phrases should exist because they signal completely different actions. This is why people should listen to their grandparents. Grandparents are linguistic piñatas that are just waiting to be cracked open. (Disturbing as that image might be). Some of my nana's favourites were "you've got to eat a penneth of dirt before you die" and "once is a mistake, twice is your own fault". It mightn't be expected of us to use these type of outdated phrases in our everyday lives but every word, every phrase, every utterance makes for a richer, fuller language that can turn chaos into precision and into chaos once more. And if someone scoffs at you for using such sayings, I wouldn't pay it any mind. It is their loss, after all.


Have a beautiful day, reader!
Mike.xx

Eighteen Straight Whiskeys

I love London! To be constantly imbued with the sense of wonderment!


I have gone through the motions with our nation's capital since moving here three months ago. I find that it is both the most creative city in the English-speaking world and yet the one most likely to oppress any glimmer of such creativity. Its exorbitant expense often makes me think twice, being currently 'between jobs', at whether I should even leave the house some days for fear of bankruptcy.


However, sometimes on those warm London afternoons when that frigid, frozen, baron bunch of hopeless accountants and clap-trap politicians haven't managed to wade in and destroy our creative temperaments, we can see London for the bohemian metropolis that it is and has been for so many years - if only one knew where to look.


Saturday afternoon was one such time, when my boyfriend and I embarked on The Literary London Pub Crawl (refer to: https://www.facebook.com/LiteraryTour?fref=ts). Pubs are one of the things I often avoid in London because I am far too tight to enjoy them. However, I have found that subject-specific walking tours are a way to see the city that one wants to see. They have walking tours for just about any interest and this means that everyone can find their own London - the city that boasts their own personality.


The tour took us around Fitzrovia and Soho describing the regular haunts of Mr Orwell, of Dylan Thomas and even Sir Paul McCartney (a personal favourite). The two actors leading the tour, one Mr Charles Dickens and the other Mrs Virginia Woolf, take upon different characters as they sift through centuries of English literary giants. However, the highlight of the tour is definitely watching the reactions of the general public, who stand aghast, as the actors spontaneously burst into song or fall, as a drunk Brendan Behan, to the floor and then struggle to get back up. The beauty of it being, of course, that it feels like everyone is involved. Even the passers-by will have comments to make, although sometimes I'm sure the actors would prefer that they didn't.


The tour is a pub crawl because the public house is, historically, where people would gather to talk philosophy, or politics, or just plain shit; depending, of course, on the amount of alcohol consumed. It can, therefore, be an expensive day if you are partial to eighteen straight whiskeys, like Mr Dylan Thomas. However, it is affordable even for the other unemployed writers out there if, like me, you are captivated by the idea of digging up the past to mould the future (and you stick to tap-water).


And that is what life in any city is like: one must make of the city what one makes of life. My London is inherently different from anybody else's, just as my Liverpool or my Leeds are what I see them for. This truly is the most spectacular place with something for everyone; the trick is to find that something and milk it for all it's worth before the rent-man sells your creativity for magic beans that don't turn out to even be magic at all. What a waste!


Mike.xx

Pride and Aspiration

Hello new reader of my new blog!



Despite the Americanisation of my blog title, I am quite excited to have finally given into the peer pressure to start one of these things. Of course, the title is Americanised because it is a piece of dialogue from The Great Gatsby, which epitomises the mind-set of the American dream. The American dream is, indeed, aptly named as, and I quote Mr George Carlin when I remind readers that, "It's called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it".



However, this is not a post about America, or their idiosyncratic approach to the English language. Indeed, how wearisome would that be! No, this is, more aptly, a post about aspiration and pride and the danger of losing sight of reality as a consequence. As the King James bible would tell you: "Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall." Haughty. Hee-hee; that's rather a fun word to say. There is something almost sexual, yet somewhat jovial about it...



How often do we let ourselves believe what we want to believe instead of what is blindingly obvious? I have begun to evaluate how I spend my time and it goes something like this:



Doing what I have to do to get by: 30%
Doing what I want to do with my life: 0%
Thinking about doing what I want to do with my life: 70%



This almost structured waste of time seems to completely dominate me and I'm sure that I am not the only one. I pride myself on saying "I'm a writer", but what I have realised recently is that I spend more time aspiring to be a writer than I actually spend writing. Pride is futile; we do not need it. The American Dream is bollocks; a century or two of American literature has taught us that. Pride goeth before destruction; there are about a dozen Shakespeare plays that tell us that! I am hereby renouncing any ounce of pride from my existence, and if you had any real pride, reader, you would too. Then, we too can be p-paralyzed with happiness and enjoy a life in which we control our expectations and not be ensnared by their dangerous and wily ways.

Much love to you all, and I will see you tomorrow!
Mike.xx