4 months later.

You can end up losing the best people in your life through being afraid, afraid to be honest, afraid to love, afraid of letting yourself be loved. People say and probably do understand but they will not enable it forever. Continue this for long enough and you'll find that even you want to escape yourself.

For all the shit I spout, I live with large amounts of shame, ignorance and fear and behave accordingly routinely, not to all people but to the few that make it over the wall.







- I write in order to avoid talking, for you see as a human, I suck at talking.

Location:Albany Close,London,United Kingdom

Do Words Matter?

Part 1

The more I experience and the more I increase my seldom interactions with others, I realise that we very regularly misuse words and have a tendency to completely deviate from their denotative meaning, instead focusing on the emotive. This is of course understandable, as we are humans loaded with emotion. The troubling thing is that once we replace the meaning of a word and consistently apply it within the parameters of our reality, it then becomes for us, the norm.

One such example is the word "skill". Culturally, we define and measure it comparatively, retrospectively or arbitrarily using barometers we have little to no knowledge of. While this may sound perfectly normal, this in fact runs counter to its definition:

"the ability, coming from one's knowledge, practice, aptitude, etc."

After contemplating the meaning of the word, I was taken aback, severely, as like most, my understanding and grading of skill always involved other people but in fact, the core essence of skill is that it comes from within.

If we interpret "skill" as a quality adorned by others, which needs recognition and quantification from others, we immediately render ourselves as understudies in our pursuits, interns in our own life who possess zero self-knowledge. Perhaps this is part of greater human ailments; a devaluation of self and a reliance on authority. Perhaps. What I am certain of, is that if we define skill as a personal attribute, one that combines our experiences and perceptions, then as people, we all possess skills, we all have skills that apply to us and only us but over time and through the commodification of skills, a static set of norms has emerged which we internalise and measure ourselves against.

Perhaps it's time we step firmly into tomorrow with belief and a heightened sense of self-appreciation and a resounding duty to value and nurture our own skills.



- I write in order to avoid talking, for you see as a human, I suck at talking.

Location: In Transit

Phonebook

Phone books are a Rolodex filled with reminders of the present and past. Scroll through and you will probably see numbers belonging to past friends, close colleagues and present loves. I randomly scrolled through mine and came across a strong memory:




- I write in order to avoid talking, for you see as a human, I suck at talking.

Location:In the past

Art I Like #6

Spotted a Banksy piece on a humble side road in Wood Green. The Union Jack bunting is real and a plastic case frames the entire piece.
If you see it, stare at it, long enough for you to think about what Britain's politically charged street artist is trying to convey.





- I write in order to avoid talking, for you see as a human, I suck at talking.

Location:Wood Green, London N22

Three Things I Learned This Week.

1) Be honest with yourself. Don't fool for the artistic trickery of your ego and the image it paints of you. Just see yourself. You don't have to like or dislike what you are but you must be able to see it.

2) There are not two sides to an argument. There is only an event and the interpretations that follow.

3) Lotus Biscuits contain magical powers.



- I write in order to avoid talking, for you see as a human, I suck at talking.

Location:The Usual Places

The new mantra.

There is a phrase being spouted by politicians. It isn't a new one, in fact I'd say it's been making regular appearances in the circle of professional politics for the last five months but in the run up to this weeks budget, it is everywhere - "Open for business." 

The three-word mantra is the basis for the bulk of the legislative agenda being hurriedly pushed through this year and will serve as a bedding for more to come. 

If you think this is the ramblings on an inebriated malcontent then watch this weeks news coverage, read the soundbites of every politician this week and you're guaranteed to hear something along the lines of: "taxation must be cut to show foreign investors that we are open for business", or "in order to boost the economy, we must do away with red tape, so that Britain can be seen as open for business.' The cosmic quality of that chant is that it justifies ideas and decisions that previously, would have been questioned and quite possibly would have met their death in early committee meetings. But its real power is that it shouts from the rooftops that everything is "for sale" and by everything, we mean all things public, schools, health services and soon roads and motorways.

I read an article in The Telegraph by a clergyman, he expressed concern over the governments decision to temporarily suspend Sunday trading laws. The root of his concern was that such an experiment was merely a litmus test for the eventual eradication of Sunday trading laws, something he believed would result in society spending the Lord's Day worshiping in retail dungeons, lapping up buckets of Costa lattes while shopping for boat shoes and iPads. What hit home about his frustrations was his dismay for the idolatry of 'the economy', the slightly confused patriotism of throwing all political motivations into being 'open for business'. 

As I watch the Budget announcements on Wednesday and read the final draft of the NHS bill, I'll take stock of the clergyman's anxieties. Hopefully others do too.

I want to be Vin Diesel

I watched Fast Five over the weekend and enjoyed it immensely. For those unfamiliar with the film, it’s about a team of Top Gear enthusiasts who use their knowledge of sparkplugs to exploit the criminal underworld of Brazil – or something of that nature. Any who, as I sat through ninety plus minutes of high octane car chases and urban slurs (big up Tyrese), I found myself slowly warming to the character Dominic, a moody protagonist, played by Vin Diesel, whose monotone exchanges and bland face make him the human equivalent of the colour used to decorate prison walls. That aside, there were three reasons why I gravitated towards him:

1) Bad dialogue notwithstanding, Dominic is a criminal with conviction and has an unbreakable allegiance to his team of chiselled bandits.

2) Beyond an endless supply of white tees, white vests of white jeans, his desires are minimal, the sign of a man who has mastered himself.

3) Dominic, like many a shaved head psychopath, is a man of his word. Whether it is enacting revenge on enemies past, or sharing his Tesco Petrol Points, he prides himself on being a man who lives by a set of self-compiled standards.