Kodachrome

the mind plays tricks on us

all the time.

what we think is reality is perhaps only  

our perception fed through the filter of experience  

that old line about

"reality is for people who cant handle drugs"

but what is really reality?

and was it how we remembered?

past girlfriends come to me in dreams

I talk to old mates

find myself in exam rooms

or driving cars long turned into spoons

I go back and look at photos

and always im amazed at how

my brain has invented and embellished

fiddled and photoshopped

and my memory

despite photographic evidence

still persists in telling me

how things were even if they weren't

I'm not talking about being high or hung over..

even if you are dead straight

which I am (most of the time)

its only a version sanitised or not.

 a line comes to me from simon and garfunkle

 If you took all the girls I knew 

When I was single 

And brought them all together for one night 

I know they'd never match 

My sweet imagination 

everything looks worse in black and white.

Ah the ultimate reality show

that we are all players in

life

evening anatomy

we started at the bourbon

shmicked up for the modern world

feasted on soft shell crab drowned in butter

and cured clams

perhaps a bottle of pinot grigio?

and a negroni to boot

madame La solitaire joined

as we moved on down the road to the old growler

and descending into the subterranean hell

I was hit by the smell of tradesmen

and the place was packed and noisy

too old for the sensory assault we left

the next stop Eau de vie

an absinth tower with taps

delicately we drank the aniseed

and talked sitting in decadent surrounds

of life and fun that we had or were going to

we could hear ourselves think

and the place didn't stink!

and lastly the victoria room

with its couches and drapes and 

good old fashioned music

more friends joined and we were literally the last people there

"turn out the lights"

 the staff said

as they left.

tucked up in bed at 1.30

and slept soundly till 7am

no kids no alarms

just the habit of a thousand days

and the synchronicity of two minds 

and a beautiful saturday.

maybe in my next life i'll be able to sleep in..

delusion and illusion

I can hear her heart beat for a thousand miles

And the heavens open every time she smiles

And when I come to her that's where I belong

Yet I'm running to her like a river's song

she give me love love love love

crazy love

you know the words

what a load of bullshit

there I was with yoga-girl

gardening on Prosecco and Aperol

and the song came to me

from the verandah speaker

and in a moment of clarity 

I realised how we are all

deluded by emotion

and lead down the (garden) path

there is no truth

but what we think

there is no reality 

but what we perceive

When I was a much younger man

I believed I was desperately in love

with a girl whom I could not live without

and this was our song.

20 years later

I can't stand the woman

and all that I felt was 

wrong

The history of our lives

is writ on the lines of our face(s)

and the meaning is dependant

on how we feel at this moment.

life is an illusion

repeated day to day

tricking the people

into the belief of meaning.

and thats the rub

in the end what you believe

changes all the time

if only we knew it then.

the meaning of life

theres hidden meaning everywhere

if you want to look 

deep enough and 

think about life

so now im almost 42

an abstract age

made famous by a brilliant mind 

thirty years ago

so the meaning of life is 42 eh?

or is 42 when you look for

the meaning of life

and begin to wonder..

to qoute the bard

I am in blood stepp'd in so far

that to return would be as tedious

to go o'er

its a one way ticket

its the last man standing

its the eternal joke

and its not always funny

experience or study

control or out of it

fit or fucked

creative or numb

I'm reading a book

about the rise of muslim power 

and the apathy of the west..

asleep at the wheel

I watched a video of Chinese fur farm

animals skinned alive

a haunting image of a skinned beast

raising its head and looking at the camera while it dies

why?

explain it to the cow you just ate

or the dog that became the trimming

on your handbag.

but thats a bit heavy man

what about the good bits

the sunshine after rain

and the innocence of children

Gerard

Manley

Hopkins 

wrote

as the last lights off the black west went

oh the morning at the brown brink eastward springs

for the holy ghost over the bent world broods

with warm heart and bright wings.