Tag: metaphor

Flight.

Time. Timetimetimetimetime. Where does it all go? Nowhere, you’re the one going places.

I’ve been off on many tangents lately. Flittering about through fiction, illustration, leopard geckos and past traumas. And I keep coming back to the issue that there simply aren’t enough hours in the day to fully indulge myself in the explorations I wish to pursue. Quite often, I stop myself from starting because I know a thread left half-pulled is infinitely less satisfying than one left in the weave.

I suspect I need a radical change. A change more radical than I am probably willing, at this point in….’time’, to make. And so I also suspect that things may be about to get more uncomfortable for me, until I reach the point where I become willing to make it. But I’m holding out hope, still, in this relatively comfortable place, that there is an alternative of inching forward toward the precipice, throwing things over the drop, so that when I get there, and peer over the edge, I will see the landing, and feel reassured that I won’t break my legs. That the change will no longer be so radical that I feel I will need to spontaneously grow wings.

But it would be pretty cool to have wings, I can’t deny that. And the thing is, maybe I have them – maybe I’ve spent these years of life growing them. I don’t know. All I know is I’ve never really flown before. Maybe the only way to find out if you can fly is to fall a great distance, and see if the wind catches in your feathers.

I’ve tried flying a few times before – I didn’t kill myself, but the landings were hairy, and I didn’t arrive at the intended destination. It hasn’t felt fair to take that leap with a five-year-old on my back. Not because I fear he would suffer materially, if things went bad – he’s lucky to have a lot of people looking out for him. But if I land badly, my mind will likely become an inhospitable place for a while, and I probably wouldn’t be able to shield him from that. I would be less pleasant, all my demons made manifest. And it wouldn’t be his fault, and it wouldn’t be his choice.

Oh, but it’s so clear that I’m holding myself back. And I’m not sure there’s a rationalisation that can withstand scrutiny. I’m scared, that’s all.

Posted on by Yve 0

I believe in action

I don’t actually. It’s just that I once had a travel blog, and I decided, because I don’t like coming up with titles, that the titles would just all be song names, and as I was thinking about this blog post, it reminded me of this song title, and so now that is the title. Old habits and all that. I’ve probably already done that a few other times on this blog, come to think of it. And explained it then too. But hey, we’ve passed 300 posts now, I’m allowed to repeat myself.

So, at this stage in my life, I believe in action only with a heavy caveat. I believe in inspired action. Action when it feels right. I don’t always live by this belief – the more involved you are in conventional society the harder that is to do, I find – but I try, and I fight with myself over it regularly. And then I try to stop fighting, because that’s counterproductive.

But I am being inspired to action lately; the wave is rising in me and when we reach the crest I’ll have some decisions to make. Do the scary things I’m being urged to do, or let it pass me by and wait for the next one. I believe in doing the things, but when I think about doing them I make myself feel small and stupid. I am going to fall over, aren’t I?

Posted on by Yve 0

Wordgame: Cracks

Well I do have plenty of those.

The parts things slip through.

Blind spots. Oversights. Areas of complacency.

But sometimes I can stare at a crack all day and not get any closer to figuring out how to fix it.

Points of friction. Dust collectors.

Bad fucking luck.

That’s why we avoid them after all. Scared we might fall in.

Posted on by Yve 0

Wordgame: Armageddon

I like to believe that a truth isn’t a truth if it can’t be understood multiple ways and still be true. If you can’t do that with it; if you can’t twist it and shrink it and stretch it and look through it the other way, then you haven’t yet reached the truth; you still have some artifice to clear out.

So. Armageddon. Could it be true? Well, the end of days, one way or another, almost certainly. A holy war on a hill? …Dunno…maybe?

But I prefer to read religious texts as sort of codified metaphors, because, I mean, why wouldn’t you? So, I wouldn’t personally be inclined to take it at face value.

I am not, however, a religious scholar, so I’m going to veer off now, to avoid flamboyantly displaying my ignorance.

I am a fan of the apocalypse.

I’m a fan of the tower moment, when it all comes crashing down.

Let it all burn, I say.

But I’m only a fan because I have hope that they are not the end of the story. In fact, I have faith that they are not the end of the story. I know they are not. I know that they are, in fact, the beginning. That they are necessary stages of our true becoming. And you can’t fucking convince me otherwise.

Does there come a time when the righteous parts of us need to slay our sin? I’m not sure I’d say it that way. But does there come a time when we need to let our sin die? Undoubtedly. Whether that’s personal or collective; we can’t keep limping on with the mistakes of the past clamped fast to our ailing shoulders for eternity. Something’s got to give – if not our sin, then it will be us. Just natural consequence.

Either way, when it all falls, our world must be reshaped in a new image. Unrecognisable. Irrevocably transformed. If we look at it from this side, it might look like death. Or, worse; annihilation. But, maybe, if we squint just right, it could look like transcendence.

Posted on by Yve 0

Wordgame: Serum

Fucking trust me to add something like ‘serum’ to my word game. Fuck knows what else I have lying in wait to shoehorn into relevance.

When it comes to skincare, I like serums. High concentration, minimal residue.

For many years I had no skincare routine at all – I didn’t even wash my face – and I greatly preferred it that way. Partly, yes, because I couldn’t be arsed. But also because any time I did try out something in the way of skincare, it messed shit up. It disrupted the balance. I could feel it, and it felt worse.

Serums though, are my kind of skincare. In, out, no-one even knows that they were there. They have allowed me to believe I am finally exploiting the miracle of modern science to preserve my countenance. Because I can use a serum, and my skin is still my skin. I have now built an entire regime around having my skin still feel like my skin.

When it comes to relationships, I think I prefer serums too. Give me the good stuff, but don’t fuck with my life.

For a long time I’ve mostly avoided them, because all the ones I ever had disrupted the balance, and I realised being in them felt worse than being alone.

But I’m exploring other options.

Posted on by Yve 0

Rust bucket

When I sold my old Golf to a breaker for fifty quid, we met at a junction in the middle of nowhere, and he drove it away illegally through the narrow Welsh backroads. It all felt terribly sudden.

I got a message half an hour later saying ‘I have no idea why but I absolutely love driving this car’. That car had a lot of fucking problems, and it was also my favourite place to be, so my heart soared at seeing him share this. My Golf was instilled with hours of carefree meandering over winding mountain roads, windows down, singing along to Jason Mraz. It was nights parked up in the Brecon Beacons, backseats down, halfway home from a gig in Cardiff. It was the illusion of power and competence I felt when changing gears, accelerating out of a bend, or reversing a whole mile down a country lane. And it was also the nagging worry of everything wrong with it that I couldn’t afford to fix. And all the really stupid low-speed collisions with inanimate objects. And the bad judgement calls that got me stuck in ditches for no good reason whatsoever.

It was an extension of me. It was tied to my identity. And it was also unfortunately tied to my self-worth, which was why I ended up selling it to a breaker for fifty quid. I have no doubt that, despite being such a joy to drive, my old Golf still got ripped apart. It could have had a better ending than that. The breaker himself admitted he was surprised I accepted his offer. But I couldn’t see it at the time. So instead of advocating for it, I folded.

There are too many times in my life, looking back, that I folded. Because I couldn’t see the value of what I brought to the table.

Posted on by Yve 0