Archive for May, 2010
080510 – 36. what, where, how, when and, Who?
Hello there,
I hope you are extremely well, in the extreme.
Its Saturday morning and whilst pondering my life over a cup of coffee and listening to a bit of morning Parisian Swing, in Crosby and in bed, it dawned on me that my life seems as uncertain as the current state of British politics, hung, and unfortunately not hung in the sense that I’d hoped. My life then is a hung life?
You see in my usual manner I have been pondering, pondering what to write on here, pondering why I write on here, pondering what path my life is taking and pondering if I’ll ever do the stuff I set out to do, pondering the cost of living the life I want to live, which is just life, or so I’ve pondered.
Take this website for instance, who is Andrew Beattie? What was I hoping to achieve by it? I mean I charged myself with writing little snippets from my life, an online diary, revealing my inner most thoughts to the world, or at least a small corner of it, but to what effect? I’ve been doing it for nearly a year now and I’d kind of hoped that by writing this kind of shit down I could stop, for a moment, the million thoughts of Rocket Ships, Time Travelling Men with old dusty arm chairs and Love stories, usually involving me and any female I come into contact with at any given moment even the ones I don’t speak to which is most of them, all racing through my mind at the speed of light or much much faster and colliding a million million times a second, and allow myself a moment to get stuff done, live a life.
I don’t feel that I’ve achieved this, not in the slightest. For a start I don’t come here to write enough, there are large gaps where I allow the thoughts to race and even larger gaps in my little rambling updates where I miss out the things that I have done. As such I have left a really shitty patchwork blanket effect of experiences over the year with large gaping holes and worst of all I still have no idea who the hell Andrew Beattie is which is rather troubling considering I’m him, he is me and we are one.
So, taking this website of mine and piecing together its fragments and snippets of me I am left with several pieces key of insight. Like a really crappy detective I have pieced these together with a little sellotape and I can now say for certain that I am pretty sure Andrew Beattie, at this present moment, is:
1. A list maker
I see two clear lists here involving things that I hope to do. I will either forget these lists ever exist shortly after making them or in most cases I will beat myself up, both literally and metaphorically, for not doing the things on the lists that I have made to try and make some sense and add some direction, any direction, to my life. See Writing and Travelling.
2. A writer who does not write, except very occasionally
This could have easily been ‘the chief procrastinator’ as that in reality is the reason I write so infrequently. I dream of writing, I long to write, I long for the days when I can sit and just write, all day, about things that I have entirely made up, I long for that day to be today and whilst doing this longing and dreaming I never actually write. This, in terms of being a writer, or an aspiring writer, is a problem, albeit a pretty simple one to overcome, which I won’t, but I must as I fully intend to….what?
The first chapter of a book I’ll never write
3. A traveller, who has travelled but once
I long, there’s that word again, to travel, and I’ve almost certainly mentioned this. I long to take myself off with a little bag, a pad and a pen, a camera, which I won’t use, and wander around this planet we call home to meet, eat, see, smell, feel and ponder. It’s a dream, a wonderful, wonderful dream of unparalleled happiness. In terms of making and breaking plans it would appear that this is pretty high up the list. Will I ever wander?
Sober and in need of adventure
4. Lonely
It would appear as I look back through the depths of a year that I am, or at least feel, quite alone. It’s clearly not the case, I am very rarely actually alone although I do my best to be, but I do feel in a sense, and every waking hour, that I’m missing out on the biggest prize that life can offer, the L word. Like everything, my constant pondering often leaves me, well pondering, whilst missing the living part, the travelling part, the life part, that allows this prize to be given, earned and won. A pattern is emerging.
Love and a small moment for reflection and a lonely hearts ad
5. Quite possibly an alcoholic
Or, almost certainly, quite definitely and without doubt an alcoholic. See, a huge gap where December should have been and the following:
6. Panicking
I have no wish to tempt fate with this one as I haven’t had a massive, hospitalising massive, panic attack for a while. The evidence of this in just one year of writing is startling.
The two week panic attack of the morris dancers
7. A dreamer
See, “the million thoughts of Rocket Ships, Time Travelling Men with old dusty arm chairs and Love stories, usually involving me and any female I come into contact with at any given moment even the ones I don’t speak to which is most of them” and just about every other possible scenario and situation possible, impossible, unfathomable and downright ludicrous. See also, writing to aliens.
Happy thoughts from an Indian Summer
If there are any conclusions to be drawn from this it’s that, there aren’t any conclusions. You see, the one key issue here is that whilst I ponder the stuff I want, aspire and long to do, I never actually bloody go and do them. I wonder why I should do them, I ponder how I should do them and I consider when I should do them. The answers are simple: that I should do them because I’ve set out to do them in the first place, that I should just bloody well do them and that I should fucking well just go and do them right bloody now, this instance and without another moments delay.
There it is, there it bloody well is, its part of the answer, it’s the key to it all. It is isn’t it?
On that rather pondering note, I’ll be off now to go and visit some friends for lunch and then go to a party in Liverpool in which she could be there and they almost certainly will. Why am I doing this, because…why I am I doing this?
Thank you for your infinite patience and until next time,
Be great.
Tally Ho,
Andrew Beattie
020510 – 35. Politics, liars, fools and me
Hello Reader,
Thank you.
It’s almost half past seven on a bank holiday Sunday weekend and it’s taken me this long to write again, precisely the amount of time between the last time I wrote to you and now, whatever period of time that is, exactly. I’ve been putting it off all weekend to be totally honest, inventing small tasks like making tea, drinking tea, smoking and moving items around my desk, so as to avoid sitting down to write to you about something or other. This however is neither here nor there as here I am and on I’ll go.
I’m growing to hate politics. I’ve never actually liked politics, it’s not my cup of tea at all, but up until around two weeks ago I had lived my life with complete indifference to politics, politicians and their policies. It was a wonderful arrangement that politics and I had and in return for my indifference I asked or wanted for nothing.
I was however totally aware that they, politicians, were and still are massive liars. I was also aware that they, the current lot in charge, were also guilty of murder on a large scale and that they were all, the lot of them, thieves. A great big load of villains, all of them, without exception, except for the good ones, who I’m not sure exist. So I was totally aware of the villainy then, but still totally indifferent. Shame on me.
I didn’t like the fact that these people with whom we freely give power are all villains but then for the most part they never impacted on my life in any way whatsoever, that I was openly aware of anyhow. They didn’t influence my choices, they didn’t change the way I thought, and they most certainly did not shape the path of my life. So why then should I have been anything other than indifferent. Well I shouldn’t should I?
Why is it then that a once totally politically indifferent person like me should be in any way hateful of a subject that I care to know so little about? Well its election time at present (I write in this manner so that my future politically active self can read this back and chortle with a little perspective on what is happening right around now) here in the UK, a time when we pick the latest lot of liars to lead our country into the next major conflict in the middle or far east and take us valiantly, waving flags as we go, into a huge implosion of the European markets, another matter of which I am proudly indifferent, and for at least the next four years. As such I cannot read the newspapers, watch the TV or live a normal human life without seeing Gordon Brown and Nick Clegg’s face and David Cameron’s ‘face’ and hear their shallow promises about health reform and nonsense regarding immigration, which in my opinion isn’t an issue at all, in the UK and worst of all I have to suffer as people that I have come to love and respect also talk about these very same ‘issues’ whilst guarding themselves from my limited respect.
What is usually a massive lot of bollocks then has now been reduced to a massive lot of bollocks in which 3 grown adult men call each other and everyone else nasty names in front of the world via the media. They are hair pulling and happy slapping away from being the type of twat I hate the most in the world although I suspect at least one of them will make it into the higher echelons of this list within hours, possibly even before I finish writing.
But why do I care? Why, for the love of all that is sacred to me, do I give a flying fuck? Well you see I feel that I have to vote now and I can’t think who I should vote for and why the fuck they deserve a) my vote and more importantly, b) the time it will take me to vote. There is only one reason I’m even considering voting, but it is a biggie.
The BNP, what a massive bunch of cunts those guys are. For those of you who are not aware the BNP, or British National Party, are a band of politically charged racist thugs who because of the complete stupidity and endless ignorance of a selection of the UK’s population have received the slightest power in the UK and Europe. In some people’s eyes they are presently a credible political force. PAUSE FOR LAUGHTER. I use the word people loosely here as the only people who feel this way are clearly complete fucking fruit loops or/and inbred to within an inch of their cousins. These guys are Nazi’s by the way, I shouldn’t really have forgot to mention that, although they systematically deny it much in the same way I suspect that they would systematically have invaded Poland and so on and so forth had they been in power in Germany in the 1930’s. They are however in my opinion extremely dangerous, Nazi’s are dangerous, history has shown us this, and for that reason a vote for anyone else is a vote against the potential ramifications of giving these horrible bastards anything more than their currently limited power.
I probably should have taken a more active interest in politics, I am aware of this now. At present I have not a fucking clue who to vote for, or despite what I’ve written above whether or not I should vote at all. Maybe indifference was the answer after all.
So, who is it going to be? Well I’ll have to leave you in suspense good citizens of the world because I have no idea. I’d really rather hoped to have fitted in a little today about literature, what I have been up to, and what really happened that time I was at the circus. Next time maybe. Until then,
Look left, and right.
Cheerio,
Andrew Beattie
P.S. If it appears that I never found a reasonable conclusion with this week’s little rambling effort then you should really remember two things;
a) With politics and elections there is no reasonable conclusion
b) I never, ever, reach a reasonable conclusion, with anything