Smoke and Ashes.

My thoughts - all in a single cigarette. Smoke and ashes.
The routine of overlooking Moulsecoomb Hill from my garden has seemingly become about expression. I smoke to create; ash dancing in updrafts fighting to stay captured in thought waves now separated from its source. The smoke: twisting and swirling about my eyes and body. They dissipate, much like my thoughts as soon as I can reach for a pen.
I wonder about those before me breathing the Sussex air and what it might have been they contemplated on similar nights. Did they have my thoughts? I can't say.
I always seem to be the last to go to bed in my house - even if the people I live with have been out into Brighton. It's as though I am waiting for some prolific development. I wonder if you know or whether you never really "got" my depths. There isn't much to get, really.

Sometimes it is difficult to know you are alive despite so much life around you. Perhaps it is due to this bustling that life becomes forsaken.
The trees bare, the animals still and the people asleep. You, your thoughts, and the night. There is a jingling sound that comes across the garden to the right and I don't suppose I'll ever know the cause of it - I don't, in fact, need to know.

The cigarette ends and I stub it out on the wall to the conservatory. It dies in glitter and resistance. I retire.
Have I sealed the fate of a youth's death; to become a memory in those minds I met fleetingly? Or perhaps worse, to become old and still clutching this cigarette thinking still about all that was and all that might never be. Possibly bitter, with me as the one reminiscing with old faces that I once knew; all in the end of a cigarette.

Shelter in the memories of love, knives in the wind now feel dull.
At night shadowed phantoms steal embraces from the pitch black depths of the corners of my room. The general buzz that life emits seems quieter.

Tonight held fearsome winds and upon the demise of this night's nicotine appeasement the embers flew toward my face. Surrounded by the possibility that the land might tear apart tonight, the expression of emotion to my fellow man seemed distant and unimaginable. A consistent squeaking from above seemed company enough to invite myself out for a final cigarette at 3.05am.

Gold Dust.

I feel that this song is haunting and universal.
Everybody should know it.

Possibly the greatest 8 minutes captured ever.

The Way Things Are.

I'm running on approximately one hour of sleep.
I have work today.

It feels as though there is a tremendous amount of dead weight floating in the space around me. It has no distinguishable features other than its heaviness. The floor is littered with thoughts and emotions that again, I cannot quite tell apart. I wonder if it is simply because of the inevitable juncture in my life I am about to face: leaving university. Although, this will be a more than welcome development.

"I just don't know", I repeatedly say. It's as though I am bordering on senile ramblings.
I just don't know what to think or feel. There seems to be a nothingness to everything.
This is not about martyrdom: it's about life. A common phrase appraised to me lately is that I need to get out of my own headspace and away from these enveloping thoughts that contain me. I think too much (that's been said throughout my life). I need to turn off. I need to sleep. I need someone to give me an answer.

I feel myself in the air and on the floor simultaneously. In limbo.

I feel so enraged with angst and have no clear idea of the reason.
I guess I'm weary. I'm bored. Fed up. Maybe I am premenstrual.

I've no idea what my purpose is to any degree.

Nostalgia is a burden. To see elements of what our life was in this changed world.
But to receive no feedback on bad adverts, reality television, political scandals and the such like.

The petty things that make up the days. Feeling that this is still our time. A small century fractured with bad poetry and verse that never reaches you.

Videos of you are still difficult, as are the words once exchanged.

People say that if it's meant to be, then it will be.
But looking at watches, clocks, and sunrises, make me feel it is not our time and never will be.

You know it's bad when listening to Leona Lewis and Mariah Carey from the comfort of this now single bed in Reading evokes some stirring of the emotions.

Enlarge.

Romance.

This has become somewhat of a parody.
The wistful windings of human contemplation belittled by the tone of angst: long past its expiration, and self-deprecation (now so tedious).

What general musings and specifics can I offer?
I have no grand insight into human functioning. At least, I have no mutuality.
Internet 2.0 has mechanised human thought and emotion. Interaction now seems so repugnant and monotonous that I can barely muster the energy to wake up in the bitterly cold mornings. Instead, I'd rather fall back into the potential of an unconscious universe where the possibilities are seemingly endless and time is obsolete.

It seems I have nothing but cynicism left.
We do, as adults, discuss the fairytales that never came to fruition. The backhand of adulthood knocks those youthful ideals straight from our head down to our feet.

I am a part of a world (not by much choice) where the important questions that orbit the 'community' are:
"How big is your cock?"
"Are you a top or a bottom?"
And if you're fortunate enough, "Do you have a condom?".

If romance isn't dead, then it's doing a mighty fine job at hiding.

There appears to be no remedy for the opinion of this lifestyle.
Celibacy is becoming a medicated state of mind and nothing changes.

I heard yet another story from a middle-aged man, that after 8 years his partner rushed to fetch the mail. Enclosed were HIV results - he was positive. He'd cheated 4 times. They haven't been in touch for 3 years now.

It feels as though there is no value or weight allotted to the worth of the heart. And if hearts are worthless, why bother having one?

I awoke in the afternoon.

I went into the garden for my morning cigarette and a flock of birds flew overhead; all grey and black, apart from one white. In the distance toward Moulsecoomb Hill there was one white: hovering.

The flock repeatedly flew the same course, edging closer toward my house with every cycle. The white of them took the lead.

Moulsecoomb Hill.

I came inside and dwelled in the artificial light emanated from my laptop, mark 2. As I finished the sentence I saw the last two carriages vanish behind my half-drawn curtain. The lights of Moulsecoomb Hill (as I like to call it) burn endlessly. It is always a curious thought that the lights at the bottom seem a little more feeble; intermittent, and less bright than those higher up. It could simply be wandering branches trespassing across the view, but to me, it seems these lights are always the first to go out. As though a slow flooding is occurring; extinguishing whatever left they were glowing for late into the night. I never see the upper levels diminish, though I suppose they must do.

I stub out my menthol cigarette on the wall of which holds the door I must pass through. Sat, in quite casual clothes, quite casually unshaven; this is casualty. Two brand new tops, one of which I have worn more or less since arriving home from my excursion to town alone. It is my independence. The sky, a passionate rouge; almost bleeding all around me.

I never imagined that my love and my future would be such a desolate landscape (although I did joke). But it’s not just me; nobody chooses to be unsuccessful with love...it just sort of happens to you. The frog was kissed but it was only a frog. The screen of my laptop went black and Hollywood could not have prepared timing better than that. Must there come a point in anyone’s life where the belief in romance must take its final bow and retire into obscurity, or else live the rest of its professional life within the construct of pantomime? Another train makes its way toward Brighton railway station. I, for one, do not wish to live at the bottom of Moulsecoomb Hill. But I feel whatever burning that once existed must slowly suffer this suffocated fate. There appears to be no romanticised outcome to a romanticised beginning. The prongs of time pinned deeply in perpetuation within our flesh: too stubborn to yield to the reasoning of the heart. The mind has informed time that ‘now’ is not ‘then’, and to prize the teeth of these hands back would be cheating.

There are so many coincidences and parallels that with time I can only assume the quantity of which extends beyond rationale. One is able to read into the falling of a flower in front of your route. Perhaps it is just a flower. Until the romance inside has succumbed to the flooding of Moulsecoomb Hill I will persist to see more than the flower, and will wish to see nothing less. I will peel each singular petal from its source, having planned which statement will yield an agreeable consequence. As though I have any control.

The scariest thing about Moulsecoomb Hill is not knowing how much time remains before the bottom lights finally go out, and I am left looking above at those still alight.

I should stop writing and start living.

It feels as though I have begun a systematic destruction of my body. I have documented my growing nicotine addiction, and not cared. I have analysed each thought and craving, and gratified each whim. I look forward to the first cigarette of the morning. In the past, I have been more than satisfied with being a social smoker, and now it has become essential to my functioning.
At night, I look out to the lights in the distance from my Brighton garden. Smoking. Thinking. Is this it? I once had, what felt to be, such a perfect life. I was in college, I had two jobs, a large group of friends, and a boyfriend who I never even once believed would break his fidelity. How naive I was.

Since this point in my life, I have broken up with no less than two boyfriends. Again, both my decisions. Now, at somewhat of a parallel; two jobs, and at university, with a fair selection of friends. No boyfriend. This is not to say that I mind, in fact, I have become quite complacent with this situation. I do not fuck around, and merely imagine, fantasise about the great romance that could be with him, or him, or him, if he were a complete gentleman. But, this is hardly ever the case.

Upon watching 'Queer as Folk', my thoughts have become occupied with the gay lifestyle, and what it means to be a) a man, and b) homosexual, and the consequences of this pairing. It is not a happy result. I have immersed my housemates, and a few friends in this lifestyle because I am curious to know whether it is indeed outrageous, and different. It is. An ex of mine is under the impression that it is inconceivable, or at least very difficult, for a couple to stay faithful over decades of 'loving'/loving. Is it? And that, you should try to forgive their mistakes, having built upon something for so long. It has become somewhat apparent that I have backed out of relationships when the possibility of being used has cropped up. I have felt myself slipping into contentedness, and feared the ignorance overwhelming my senses. You see, I, do not want to be fooled.
Men fuck, and women love. But people are still people.

Pain is an expression of humanity, and creation is not always pretty.
So desperate to not be used, that at every given opportunity it became easier to sever emotional ties, one way or another. To relocate, and begin anew, to repeat the same cycle; enjoy fleeting happiness for the fear of potential hardship. It is with this that I took great delight in punishment - to set an example of those who do wrong. I am not a god, and just barely a human. Where does the line reside? Possibly under my feet, or more than likely, within my head. As an understanding person, I do understand human behaviour, but I am unable to fathom its reaches at the same time. That is, I do not accept the wrongs we do. I can only assume that regret becomes a staple feature in one's life. To give my whole, and not some, to those who take interest. As it is truly rare that people are interested in people. One might debate their motivations, but we could be forever in doubt, and most likely will be forever in doubt. But you cannot deny the surface, which is all we are ever able to know.

I don't believe that I will ever meet someone who wants me, and just me.
The trains still run, and I still board them. I still get drunk, and I still dance.
If there is an attractive boy sitting opposite me then I can relinquish the control reality has on me, and dream of happier times with him. I can picture him holding my hand, and smiling; eyes lit...
But the boys still get off of the train a stop too early, and then I am reminded that I am alone.

I would love nothing more than to build a life with somebody, but then in turn, I am aware of the troubles with this lifestyle. The boredom, the predictability, the heightened risk of cheating. Still, I would rather that was my life than what I witness.
I have less than a year left in Brighton. The final Halloween has already been; next Bonfire night, my 22nd birthday, Christmas, New Year's, Easter, and the last summer by the seaside. I can't pretend to know what the future holds, but I know the romance.