Thursday, August 12, 2010

hurt people hurt people






Obviously the way to make myself more settled was to acquire some of the trappings of permanence but there never seemed any point acquiring the aptly named trappings of permanence when in a couple of months I might be moving on, might well be moving on, would almost certainly be moving on, because there was nothing to keep me where I was. Had I acquired some of the trappings of permanence I might have stayed put but I never acquired any of the trappings of permanence because I knew that the moment these trappings had been acquired I would be seized with a desire to leave, to move on, and I would then have to free myself from these trappings. And so, lacking any of the trappings of permanence, I was perpetually on the brink of potential departure. That was the only way I could remain anywhere: to be constantly on the brink not of actual but of potential departure. If I felt settled I would want to leave, but if I was on the brink of leaving then I could stay, indefinitely, even though staying would fill me with still further anxiety because, since I appeared to be staying, what was the point in living as though I were not staying but merely passing through?


Out of Sheer Rage


Geoff Dyer



And I got the feeling - the feeling you get when you look down at the city, and it seems to be calling to you, and providing all the answers as it tells you to step out the window and just do it, just fall through the air, just jump. That feeling we all get when we look down at the pavement from a great height.
Or is that just me?


Tony Parsons

Men from the Boys





Some people stop believing that happiness is going to come to their way. On the brink of becoming one of them, I began to accept that it was my destiny to be unhappy. In the normal course of things I would have made some accommodation with this, would have set up camp as a permanently unhappy person. But what happened in Varanasi was that something was taken out of the equation so that there was nothing for unhappiness to fasten itself upon. That something was me. I had cheated destiny. Actually, the passive construction is more accurate: destiny had been cheated.
I remembered how personally I used to take everything. Two years previously, I’d been given tickets for the opening day at Wimbledon, Centre Court. It rained, off and on, all day. We kept waiting, looking at the sky, hoping….
It was as if there was a curse on me. No one else- not the players or anyone else in the stadium – suffered to the extent that I did. It was my day, my Wimbledon, my parade was being rained on.
The weather had come between me and what I wanted – which was to watch tennis. The pain and rain were intolerable because they conformed to a broader climatic pattern: something was always coming between me and what I wanted.
That afternoon at Wimbledon it was the rain; another day it was another thing. But there was always something. I realised now that that thing was me. I was in the way. I was ahead of me in the queue. I was keeping me waiting. Everything was a kind of waiting. When I drank beer, I was waiting for the glass to empty so that I could have it filled and start drinking again. Rather than simply enjoying the high of cocaine, I was also monitoring it, to see if the effect was wearing off, so I could top it up, have more, start monitoring again…..



Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi

Geoff Dyer