At the Blue Magnolia

I keep a diary; have done ever since I was a lad. It used to be about the doings of my day. Highly condensed because I only had one of those tidgy little things small boys can put in their trouser pocket. My mum used to buy me one every year.
It was much later that I began to write about my thoughts and feelings – then I called it a ‘journal’. Now I keep TWO records: One is a brief account of things that have happened (and are going to happen), my ‘diary’, the other is my thoughts and feelings: my ‘journal’.
Do you see how I am always at pains to be exact about everything, precise – that is one of my problems: a perfectionist. I feel the need to explain myself exactly. So I have to choose the right words. But before I get the words right I have to get my thoughts right, and I think this is one of the causes of my OCD – there may be others. Sometimes I get ‘stuck’ and can’t move on until I get the ‘right’ thought.
Incidentally, I have come to the conlusion that Obsessional Compulisve Disorder is based upon superstition - even though it is burried so deeply in the unconscious that you don't even think about it. I mean, the idea that you can influence outcomes by some sort of magical thinking, or ritual. So perhaps we should avoid superstition in all its forms - wherever we find it!

SAM: I am not going to drawn on that one... for the moment.
ME: Aw! You're no fun anymore.
SAM: Do you ever share your diary with anyone?
ME: Sometimes. I have read bits out, to certain people – very close friends – heavily edited.
SAM: Why heavily edited?
ME: Well, you don’t share everything with everybody, do you?
SAM: No, but I get the impression you are more…secretive is the wrong word… reluctant – reluctant to let people really see you. Than most people, I mean.
ME: Oh, no, not the ‘real me’ thing. I’ve spent most of my life looking for the real me. But lately I have had a funny feeling that it might be like the onion: you know, you peel off layer after layer, trying to find the ‘onion inside’. But when you get to the centre: nothing. You have been throwing away the ‘real’ onion.
SAM: I never thought of it like that.
ME: Anyway, I often write silly little poems – rhymes that just… come into my head. Bits of nonsense.
SAM: Can you remember any?
ME: Now you really are behaving like a psychotherapist. Okay Mr Freud, what about this:

The Great Pyramid of Cheops
Used to have a row of shops,
When they built it, back in Egypt, long ago:
A chemist, so they say,
And a Chinese takeaway –
A Dry-cleaners, where the Pharaohs used to go.

SAM: I like it.
ME: Well, before you get too ‘analytic’, it was inspired by a couple of friends, talking about their holiday in Egypt.
SAM: Hmm. By the way, Happy New Year!
ME: Oh, yes. Same to you. Although I don’t go much on this ‘New Year’ business. All this paraphernalia about ringing the old year out and the New Year in. Load of bollocks. I mean it’s just another day isn’t it. I hate all this ritualistic stuff. In fact that is what I find so objectionable about religion.
SAM: Ah, I thought we’d get onto that, sooner or later.
ME: Don’t be so patronising. But let me ask you… something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately:
Do you think you can know by feeling? I don’t mean by feeling with your fingers, I mean a feeling. Some people talk about a gut feeling; some people say they feel it in their heart – my mother-in-law used to say she had a feeling in her water. We praise reason, and rightly so, but, as Erique Remarque said, “…let us not be too proud of it, nor too sure.” Could it be that reason, logic and scientific method are not the only ways of ‘knowing’. It is something I intend to debate with Richard Dawkins: this possibility of ‘other ways of knowing’.
SAM: I think you should.
ME: You’re being cagey, as usual. But you should read Dawkins.
SAM: I will. But – if you don’t think I am changing the subject – I’d like to know how you came to end up here… in this hostel.
ME: Well, first of all, I have not ‘ended up’ here. I do not intend this to be my permanent abode.
SAM: Ok. What happened at your brother's place?
ME: I do not think I can re-live the events of that night – not even in the telling.
SAM: It might help. Get it out into the open so to speak. What was it you used to say: if there is a monster in your cellar, invite him up into the lounge for a cup of tea.
ME: Yes, well…
SAM: So it’s a case of, don’t do as I do – do as I tell you to do?
ME: All I have are nightmarish flashes: Burst of hellish of noise. A confusion of terrible images: A thundering at the door - a man’s bellowing voice: unbolt this bloody door or I’ll kick it in. My sister-in-law, stark naked at the top of the stairs, screaming don’t you dare let that fucking fornicator into my house. Another voice: Carole – trying to pour oil on distinctly troubled waters. The oil igniting in the fiery stream of Myra’s invective. Splintering wood and breaking glass. Sirens and flashing lights. Police uniforms. And me, trapped on the landing, being sick.
SAM: Sounds like quite a night.
ME: So that’s the extent of Christian compassion!
SAM: Sorry. But what was it all about? This huha?
ME: Well, as far as I could gather-
SAM: Hold on! See that man, just come in?
ME: What man-
SAM: Standing by the jukebox.
ME: Him with the shaven head and ‘Satan’ tattooed across the back of his neck?
SAM: Don’t stare.
ME: Is he the guy you’re after?
SAM: No, it’s my boss: Chief Inspector Snape. We weren’t supposed to rendezvous for another hour. You’d better leave.

And a minute later I am out on the pavement thinking: Why do these things always happen to me! I have come to the conclusion that it must be me. Am I simply the sort of person to whom things ‘just happen’? Instead of me making things happen, they just happen. Now why is that?
A girl I once went out with said that I just ‘reacted to events’. Is that true? Should I be more proactive: a mover and a shaker as they say in the business world? I don’t think I have ever moved and shaken. But I will, if that is what it takes. In future I shall be the cause events, rather than the mug at the receiving end.


Crossing the road. A sudden clatter of engine. A whoosh of air. Squealing brakes. I have almost been run over. By a motorcycle combination! Oh no!