Sleepless

I'm up at dawn again. This time I haven't slept.

That guy who does the weather on BBC, the one I don't like; it's hard for me to justify why I don't like  him. (Strangely I feel like I should for some reason). It's not just because he does the weather bit, though that would be enough I think. I don't see the point of the weather at all. A preoccupation with the weather strikes me a damning indictment of any society. If you feel compelled to small-talk about the weather, even in an awkward discourse with a stranger, and that weather isn't something genuinely superlative (i.e. hurricane, blizzard), then do everyone a favour and just say nothing. Bite your tongue. Stand there in silence if you have to. Force yourself to think of something interesting to say or just deal with it.

Typically I watch the BBC 24 news for an hour or so before I tune out in one way or another. Past that it just repeats itself endlessly. But in that space of time I'm greeted with the weather, about which I do not care, probably 4 times or more. You're not going to like someone who serves you something you find unwelcome, irrelevant and bland four times an hour without fail. But it's more than that.

It's not that I don't like short people either. Some of my best friends are short. But this guy is a combination of short and pointy featured: prim, slight, like some kind of elf. That's exactly right - an elf. It's like you've taken a grown man and squeezed him like a sponge until everything identifiably masculine has been drained out. You're left with the human equivalent to a hotel shampoo, this suitcase-sized little thing who looks like he's on the run from Santa's grotto. And this morning the cameraman must be playing a joke or something because they've framed him much, much lower than they should. So he looks even more diminutive. Even more stunted.

Like I said at least 2 of my friends tend towards the shorter end of the scale, and I love them both. But something about this weather elf just bugs me.

Enough about that. It's a beautiful day outside. Everything is lit up so bright. Seems like a poor day to be criticising anything. Or watching the news for that matter. I've watched too much news recently. When will I learn when it's not depressing it's lies.

I'm getting creative again, after a short hiatus. That has to be a good thing.

And I'm getting back in bed with my old lover. Coffee. One day I may get to know what makes coffee taste good or bad, and maybe even tell the difference. For the moment I drink the stuff chiefly for the modest kick it gives me, and also for the pass-time it affords my hands and mouth. I imagine smokers have the same experience. The other day I overdosed late at night and had this unusual feeling of rising anxiety and claustrophobia. Also: dread. It was suffocating. It began with a fluttering sensation in my chest, like the panic of a trapped moth. It was thoroughly unpleasant and irregular. I've experienced many different things when by various methods intoxicated, only a few of them bad if truth be told, but this was among the worst. I kept thinking about my death. How inevitable and matter of fact it was. I knew I would one day expire, probably sooner than I hope. I'd go into a void; it struck me. People, when they die, they can only die alone. The sudden immediacy of that was stifling. The long shadow of that. It keeps one awake at night.

Sometimes small things make me happy. Promises and possibilities are all it takes. A good friend of mine recently opened my mind to the idea of drawing on money. This morning I gave Charles Darwin a comb sticking out of his beard and I put a couple of small eyes on the the queen's chin. If you turn her upside down it looks like a new face: the expression says "what's going on" and seems to be on the verge of something, perhaps tears, perhaps laughter. It's wonderfully ambivalent.

I don't know what more I can say so lets leave it there.