484 days
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(Day 440)

I am buried; held firm by the grip of swaying life; weighed down by the clutter of the world. However consistently these words fail to reach the heights which I aim for, they remain my only form of rebellion against tedium, falsity, acquiescence.

(Day 439)

Thoughts jostle for contention in my head. A sheet of blank paper before me reflects my inability to grip and run with any one of them. My head feels like a violently dashed snow shaker – white confetti whirling inside a white orbicular world. The part of me which instructs the pen to write can see these dancing thoughts maze around one another, can almost follow one, but just as each is about to reveal itself as something distinct and concrete from the mass of mediocrity and confusion that encircle, it falls and fuses with the white blanket of the floor. This impotence is the sadness I revisit every day. But to search inside oneself is not the gift/curse solely of the artist, but an instinct which is part of us all; to all that is who have refused to let their lives be rooted permanently in the phoney and ephemeral cloak of life and the everyday.

(Day 438)

*BoD = #82; #93

I found this shorthand at the bottom of a page in my notebook: two references to entries in Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet which I re-read recently.

(Day 437)

Stood pissing against the impossibly clean metal of the latrine. Here is one of those moments – like standing on a train between destination points – where we are alone to travel with our thoughts. And my thoughts fly. It takes 37 seconds to empty my bladder. During this evacuation, my mind races from one subject to another. At first, my attention is drawn to the hand, two fingers and one thumb of which grasp my penis. The fingers are cold and the shaft of muscle between them is warm and each reciprocates a pleasure to the other. The chilled sensation of contact has the effect of the touch of a stranger's hand. The hand is scarred. A two-inch laceration covers the round of skin which runs around the thumb side of the hand, from the knuckle base towards the wrist. Beads of red-brown are tinged by pink and red which fades into the pink of the surrounding skin. Tiny pennants of dead white skin fringe the cut. A swipe of the cat's claws cut the flesh two days ago. To roll back the sleeve of coat concealing the rest of the arm would expose myriad other scratches.

I wonder what birds make of rain? Outside I watched two seagulls alight on the roof of the platform shelter––

(Day 436)

When a worm is trodden on, disturbed, it recoils, it winds itslef into as small a circle as it can – preparing itself for the next blow.

(Day 435)

It takes twenty quiet, near-black seconds for the fluorescent tube overhead to wink into life. One or two strobes of half-intense light flare the room into bleak view, before one large push forces everything into stinging brilliance.

(Day 435)

Scrambled, fleeting words that I cannot put into order.

(Day 434)

I'm convinced that my memory is poor. That is, my memory of things, of acts and words, and my memory of the sensation of these things. Were it not, would not the repetition of these days and their events be too much to bare? Perhaps it is the anticipation of something that might intervene to change the likely repetition, perhaps this is what keeps me going. Perhaps it is rhythm and repetition that sustain me? Yes, almost certainly it is change that I fear most. It's to repeat every day that I want.

(Day 433)

Anger coarses through me. A cold evening; my crotch, underarms and back are damp from the run to catch the train, which is late. The chatter of six or seven youths, who litter the air with expletives and noise. A man stands behind the bench where I am sat – much too close for comfort, an intimate proximity almost –  and eats, loudly, something with a sweet chemically, oniony smell. On the train, a clamour for seats. I find a pair, separate from everyone else. I read, but I'm distracted, and this Marquez book is far inferior to the last one. I scratch three silver bands from the lucky-dip card that I was handed along with my change at the post office today. I spent over £20 and I received a lucky dip card which in turn affords me the opportunity to win a car. I reveal three different motifs, and, even without reading the print which tells me how to win, I suspect that I have not won.

I do not win. I blow the little scrapes of foil on to the floor.

(Day 432)

Which sadness of the past ten or so years hasn't transported me outside of myself, hasn't made me ask who and why and for what I am? Which sadness hasn't immediately manifested itself into a hundred black words across the pages of my mind? Which depression or loss, humiliation or frustration, which anger, which deprivation? Which sadness hasn't shouted at me to think clearly, hasn't taught me about love and happiness? How little I've travelled towards the thoughts and words of another. I've merely strolled around the storms and winds of my own existence. Have I really, truly, asked anything of anyone? Have I reached one eighth of the way towards the truth, the essence of someone else in anything like the fashion that I've searched that same vague part of myself? Do I know part of something that is not me to the extent that I truly feel I know it? Do I possess some part of someone else? Or do I merely press upon these thin veils of other with the gentlest of caresses?

(Day 431)

It torments me to think that someone might think with the same ardency as I do. That someone might feel these same flutters, these same surges of emotion. That someone might attach the same intensity to the simplest of realisations; that they might feel tenderness towards this rotting leaf or this stricken shard of plastic that lies in the gutter. Those are my feelings, my lust for life. Must I share all that I feel with all those others that might claim to feel something similar? To all those who see the same, who ignore or take for granted what their eyes fall upon. Must I be one among and alike those who see and feel; must I be just one more of that infinite number?

(Day 430)

I feel unwell, so stay home and watch four films. The Barbarian Invasions, Supersize Me, The Russian Ark and Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter... and Spring.

(Day 429)

Each of my days begins chasing or cheating time. I'm either away early, bouyant to be ahead of time. Or I'm late and behind.

(Day 428)

The sounds of other people fill the space. A woman talks too loudly into a phone. Her words, intended for one other are delivered to as many as two score more. A man coughs, though it is a cough borne of boredom rather than necessity. It is an action to order the throat, in the same way one might re-attend to a tie which does not need setting straight. A woman's hand caresses the jaw – mandible – of her lover. Mandible springs to mind the moment that the word jaw describes what I'm looking at. Mandible is the word that my mind caresses, just as her hand caresses the underside of her lover's face. These are the events of two seconds of this day, so alike, so unlike today... tomorrow.

(Day 427)

Rhythm. Today I'm aware that to live without without questioning what one is doing, not even to wince at the awful repeating pattern of our days, is to fall into something resembling a sleepy, idle rhythm. Sometimes, I feel as though I'm stuck in sleep.

(Day 426)

I'm creating a song in my head as I walk to the station. I hum made-up melodies and instead of words I pepper the air with a clatter of disclocated syllables, ones which don't add up to words.

(Day 425)

In emptying the waste-paper basket into the larger waste container, there spilled some pistachio shells onto the floor. I stooped to recover them and saw their reflection in the just-shiny plastic of the upright of the vaccuum cleaner. With each shell I picked up, its double disappeared from the dusty mirror surface. I smiled at how quickly six shells and their duplicates were cleaned from the floor.

14 May 2004 (Day 424)

When I write, I catch and tie down the words that have been flying through my head. Thoughts ink themselves onto page; float, fall and rub against the white background of my mind. I think and visualise words synchronistically. I try to be as eloquent and tender in thought as I would be with a pen in hand, as I might be tapping the concave black bellies of the character keys across my keyboard. And, in as much as I style so many of the thoughts of my day in this fashion, treat them so literally like words, find paper – so large and white a sheet – readily to hand, it's fair to say that I have never stopped writing, despite there being days when I wake up having forgotten my written work from the previous day and despite there being so many gaps (indeed, gulfs) between the entries that have found their way into this place which I used to visit so frequently. What we know as writing, as literature, is simply thought made permanent. Thought that has been cast in some material that has given it weight and made it intelligible for others.

5 March 2003 (Day 423)

Browsed through the lines and piles of books that filled the shelves and tables of the remainder bookstore in town. Found Everyman editions of Thoreau's Walden and Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling; desired them both, but was unable to afford either

4 March 2003 (Day 422)

Something, not quite indecision, not quite fatigue, not quite discomfort, troubles me, and leaves me unsure about fulfilling rudimentary tasks. For instance, stepping up onto the kerb earlier took far more conscious effort than seemed necessary; as though the kerb stone were several inches taller, or my leg a few pounds heavier.

3 March 2003 (Day 421)

The sky is slate upon grey slate.

2 March 2003 (Day 420)

I get home to find three ochre pools of cat vomit around the house. I tread in the first of them, and begin to print reliefs of the sole of my shoe over the kitchen floor.

1 March 2003 (Day 419)

A pigeon limps around on the pavement a few feet in front of where I walk. I am distraught by the sight of this poor, pathetic injured bird. There is a knot of scarred flesh at the base of its leg that looks like a knarled ball of wax around the base of a melting candle.

4 February 2003 (Day 418)

I've started reading Grey Area, a book of short stories by Will Self. I'm enjoying them, though already I sense that there is nothing remarkable about this book that will cause me to remember it much beyond the day or week that I finish the last story. Each of the stories is a challenge of sorts: stylistically interesting, smattered with words that require definition, titilating, humorous. Is that enough, though? This is the most disposable book that I can recall having read for a long time. There is nothing here that will stay with me; nothing here that transcends beyond the mere act of reading and understanding.

3 February 2003 (Day 417)

The photograph of the intact Columbia crew helmet found by a resident in Norwood, Texas is spread across all the front newspages of the day. It's the single most disturbing image to surface in the aftermath of the shuttle disaster, one that finally brings into proximity the loss of life, rather than the loss of a shuttle and of millions of dollars' worth of NASA equipment.

2 February 2003 (Day 416)

Reg is curled up on the desk next to me, almost asleep, on top of an old, woollen jacket. An awkward lump in the fabric has pushed his lip and cheek slightly out of shape, forming a surfeit of fur and flesh, which won't quite allow the eye to shut fully. A triangle of white film is visible, appearing as though he is awake, staring me straight in the face.

31 January 2003 (Day 415)

I finished reading The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker. Baker writes about minutiae; specifically, the minor details of a lunch hour and the objects, experiences and thoughts encountered within this sixty-minute framework. What is beautiful about this book is that this lunch hour is so very recognisable. Baker dares to write out in words the myriad courses and tangents that our mind wanders off on. I too bend to tie a fraying shoelace and wander as to its chance of longevity. I too walk on to escalators, wander whether to ride or walk, and then find that thought pushed out by an unrelated thought that suddenly seems important. Baker dares to excite/bore us with a novella that charts the significant/insignificant details of an hour of life that passes like so many other hours.

30 January 2003 (Day 414)

Some days there is nothing to report. This is one of them. It is not, of course, but I am tired.

29 January 2003 (Day 413)

From where I'm sat my eyes find the scrunched yet still long form of a woman, horizontal over two seats, and asleep. She has soft features, her skin delicately tented over the rounded bones of her face. Her lids are drawn shut over her eyes, their coffee-white colour draping the heavy ovoid forms within. I'm struck by how large these shapes are. I've always thought of eyes as being set back from the face, but here they protrude with a grace that surprises me.

28 January 2003 (Day 412)

A girl sat opposite me has just opened a bag of crisps. She has started to eat them and I can hear the crunch of every single stiffened slice of potato from where I'm sat. Ironically, I'd only reached into my bag to take out my notebook to record my annoyance at having to listen to the man behind me. He is eating an apple and I have heard every individual scythe of tooth into flesh and I have seen the hideous rictus of his mouth coming down over the diminishing form of the red fruit. Now, as I start to write, I'm assaulted by the gnash of teeth through crisp-fried potato. Things seem amplified this evening. I'm annoyed, but I'm without the conviction to move to a different part of the train. So, I sit, suffer and write.

26 January 2003 (Day 411)

I received an e-mail from a friend: a forwarded petition to stop war against Iraq. The mail asked that the 600th signatory forward the mail for the attention of a secretary at the United Nations. The mail still sits in my in-box, not replied to, not forwarded, not deleted. I'm distraught that this might be my most viable form of protest. My name will register as number 528 on a list including the names of 527 other people, all – bar the last name – people I don't know, people I have shared no discourse with. One click will speed this petition to the mailbox of a few dozen people if I choose to add my name and send it. But I won't. Nor will I travel the hundred-odd miles to join the marching protesters that aim to fill the streets of the capital in a week or so's time. I don't believe in the ability of either for adequately registering my concern.

25 January 2003 (Day 410)

Across the road, a red-brick wall with three rectangular magenta posters with black type stretched vertically down their fronts.

24 January 2003 (Day 409)

The shirt that I have just removed from stiff embrace with the radiator and pulled on over my head is patterned with twenty or thirty vertical ribs across the back and stomach, where the grills of the radiator have left their bite. The pattern is pretty and so I don't care to iron it.

23 January 2003 (Day 408)

I bought an edition of Smiling in Slow Motion, an edited collection of diaries from the last years of Derek Jarman's life. It's a handsome cased book; the jacket shows a photo of Jarman in a white linen suit. He has always struck me as an incredibly photogenic man. Jarman is a fantastically gifted artist, one capable of repeating the beauty of the world in words, paint or film. This is from the first entry, dated Saturday 11 June 1991:

For days now I have tried to start this diary, but the clatter of my existence has interrupted; the first mark on the page eludes me, it is easy to put off.

22 January 2003 (Day 407)

I tucked the yellowed copy of Seize the Day away into the pocket of my bag and spent the last two minutes of the train journey staring into the black of the window, sometimes catching the blacker forms of trees and hills, and the orange balls and strobes of light from outside, but mostly catching the reflection of the seats and table and people behind me. Have enjoyed reading Bellow these last few days. Seize the Day is a book about failure. Bellow builds his story in such clean and captivating fashion and when his character's eventual capitulation finally comes, his outpour feels quite tangible.

21 January 2003 (Day 406)

I cough.

20 January 2003 (Day 405)

Every evening that we happen to catch the same train, he is always first to the opening doors, brusquely pushing past people, stepping onto the carriage without first waiting for people to get off. There are enough spare seats to service only a quarter of the people that board the train, and he is almost always the first to occupy one of them. His rudeness bothers me more than almost any other moment of my day. How I would love to see him trip in his eagerness. How I would love to see someone bar his way onto the train.

19 January 2003 (Day 404)

Two hands move together, both to coat pockets, both to remove a packet of cigarettes. The two girls each take a cigarette in their right hand. One of the girls charges a neon-pink lighter in her left hand, puts the cigarette between her lips and sucks the flame towards her for a few seconds. Her thumb stays pushed firm against the black pedal as she holds the lighter out in front of her for her friend to come and draw against. I'm walking directly behind them when I see two smoke clouds plume into the air behind their shoulders. I can't avoid walking through their offensive trails.

17 January 2003 (Day 403)

The smell of alcohol on the breath of a youth opposite me.

14 January 2003 (Day 402)

The world once more seems on the brink of war. At least parts of the world, claiming to be acting in the interests of all, against another part of the world, each refuting the claims levied against her. Daily, the news brings its gloomy reports and forecasts. I feel in turns sad, angry, irrelevant and excited. I take in facts which foster into the skeleton of an opinion that I'm anxious to believe someone else might share. Yet I'm no more sure that I could convince someone else of my opinion than I could myself.

13 January 2003 (Day 401)

'Peacon' by The Workhouse is playing loudly in the room.

12 January 2003 (Day 400)

I come to the end of the page. I take the bookmark from between the leaves at the back of the book and rest it between the pages of this fresh spread that I have just unveiled. I close the book and turn it around in my hands, spine facing away from me, the yellowed edges of 392 pages tidily piled together. I turn it another 90 degrees and smile at the position that the bookmark has advanced to from last night. In life we take pleasure from such small successes as these.

11 January 2003 (Day 399)

I found an old notebook and these words:

'I'm beginnning to feel less and less concerned with what people think. I'm losing interest in maintaining people's enthusiasm in me. I'm troubled by things that I find difficult to express in words.'

31 December 2002 (Day 398)

Yesterday we journeyed to Cornwall. The windscreen was dirty. Rain fell and the wipers carved out an arc of transparency. On the eve of a new year, we are able to hide away from the noise, the clutter and the terror of celebration with only people dear to me for company. I'm lost in comprehending how people find any joy in an event that is so much about the scarcity of time available to us. So much about finality and mortality. I hate to think of Mum alone tonight.

29 December 2002 (Day 397)

I bumped into my old tutor. His hair is now shaved short, and he appears older. He is older; it is several years since I saw him last. As I talk with him I realise that I'm slightly nervous of being in his company. I ask him if he is still painting. He tells me that he is. I ask if he is still enjoying painting. He recoils slightly, smiles and replies, 'I'm not sure that I've ever really enjoyed painting. I think of it more as a fucking life sentence.' His answer pleases me – its coarsity, or honesty perhaps – puts me at ease. I ask if he would mind me visiting him at his studio, and as soon as I've spoken the words, I feel a huge rush of happiness. He gives me his phone number and tells me that he would be glad to receive me there one day soon. I walk home extremely happy.