Journal
February 23, 2012
So yesterday was Ash Wednesday. That’s the start of lent for you heathens out there. Went to church pm rather than am and at least this meant I didn’t have people coming up to me all day saying, ‘you’ve got dirt on your forehead.’ Yes, thank you, wankers.
Last night didn’t water the garden. Obviously sane enough to not go through the ritual. Plants will probably die now out of spite. Dog looked at me with weird expression and just knew he was thinking, ‘come on, come on, we need to go out the front, yeah, yeah, so I can wee on the trees, and the neighbors yard, and the letter box…’ Memo is on a never ending quest to block out all other animal scents in a sixty meter radius of our house. It’s quite a hard task, actually as there’s many a tree across the road.
Thought of something today. Thought happiness would come with a Louis Vuitton bag. Actually did. Thought I’d open the brown box and be smacked in the face with it. Do you know what? Is not the case. Happiness is not in handbags and to admit that to myself is like admitting you have an addicts or some other such monumental event. On monumental. Why isn’t there a word monumentous? Doesn’t that word sound more, well, monumental? Do you think I could start it? Maybe if I start using the word monumentous than people will think it actually is a word.
Today is so,not monumentous. It’s not even monumental.
And now today. What has changed? Nothing. Have two cats staring at me, thinking if their eyes bore into my skin for long enough I might give up and feed them. It’s a batter I lose every night.
Garden watered again. Why on earth is that the highlight of my day? Seems so strange, really. I saw ‘garden’ like I’ve this extravagant horticultural bonanza. I do not. What I do have is a half-dead lawn and half-dead plants. That’s pretty much what you get in Australia. My current battle is to prevent the cracks that have appeared in my lawn, or should I say, the ground below the lawn to open up any further. Dry soil in these areas have created such large cracks that I worry about my animals losing limbs. Monumental.
I spent another day talking to people I don’t like and doing work I don’t do. I ate Ikea meatballs for dinner because I couldn’t be arsed actually cooking.
So, you know, another day.
I’ve decided fuck it; I’m just going to put a post on here no matter what the fuck it’s about. Have realised that if I was to wait for something worthwhile to happen in my life before I could write about it, than I’d be waiting a very long time indeed.
Weird thing is, highlight of day is currently watering my garden. This is an oxymoron indeed, because normally any household chores which take me away from writing are viewed with a pained frustration bordering on anger which is normally taken out on the cats, the dog, and sometimes even Mr Thomas himself. Feeding the animals is another task which I deplore as it always seems the most momentous of hassles for me, when in reality it normally takes about five minutes of my time; no big deal, the same amount of time it takes to have a wee. Actually, have just seen why I’m having so many problems in that area. Always put off weeing because in my mind that’s five minutes away from my pen or my keyboard which I can’t afford to do when I’ve a full time job, husband, family, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. Normally end up in agony due to non-weeing issues and thus the result is fifteen minutes on the loo rather than five so when I think about it time management is my biggest issue at present.
Basically, everything I hate in life are things/people/situations that takes me away from my writing, which is why you’d think I’d hate watering the garden. I hate work; time away from writing in which I spend most of my day wondering how fucking stupid the human race really is. I’m not sitting here on my high horse saying I’m the smartest person in the world and that’s why I find everyone else annoying. Not the case. In fact, if those online IQ tests are anything to go by, I am rather stupid. Like, really stupid. Which kind of explains why I’ve made a lot of the decisions in my life; stupidity. Thing is, if I’m stupid, than the majority of people I deal with every day must be really, really, really stupid. Like, should be on a disability pension stupid. Sometimes I wonder what on earth it is that I did in my life to deserve it. Sometimes I realise that people like me, ie; people who hate people, should perhaps not be in a position where they have to deal with people for a living. Eating; time away from writing but seeing as though I’m a massive food addict there’s a conflict there. Animals; time away from writing. Yes, I’ve explained that feeding them is actually only a five minute job but what I haven’t explained is that after eating normally comes the regurgitation thanks to a particularly bulimic cat and the cleaning up process adds at least another ten minutes to the mix. Family; time away from writing. Thing with family is, they actually want to talk to you. They want to see you. Fuck it, they actually want to go out and have dinner with you, and that makes me so fucking angry you wouldn’t believe. Relationships; time away from writing. Poor Mr Thomas, he doesn’t expect much, but, you know, the occasional glance in his direction or ‘hi honey, I’m home’ is warranted but I can’t help rolling my eyes when I do it because I think; that’s time away from my writing, there.
Thing is, and here’s the ironic twist; what writing? I have finished, thrown out, re-started, re-edited and basically fucked about with the same fucking story for ten fucking years. Can I write it? No. Do I think it’s any good? No. Why do I continue? Because it has to end. I have to write, it has to work, I have to get out of this fucking life some way or the other and the only way I can do that is by writing. Goodness – all I want to do is finish something and get it out there and never have to worry ever again about finding time to write because then I’d have all bloody day.
Want more irony? Finding that I cannot write because by the time I get home from work all creativity and depression that comes from living a life I never wanted and never asked for has turned me into a creative mute. I’ve nothing in me. I’m a dry, manky sponge that has been left on the sink for too long and has started to smell. So I’m in this weird zone because I cannot write because of my work and I have to work because I cannot write.
And right now, at this very moment, Mr Thomas is talking to me and I’m like, stop talking to me, can’t you see that I’m typing feverishly, can’t you see that I’m trying to think about what to write, don’t you know I’m on the stupid end of the scale so I find thinking in the first place more difficult than you’ll ever know?
That’s where I am at the moment. Basically fucked up. No one said journals had to be of happy thoughts and bunnies and flowers and all kinds of cutesy shit. Maybe that’s why I don’t often post journals on here. Because, you know, it’s fucking depressing.
published in the cannon’s mouth
December 20, 2011
Two of my poems, Misted Sound and Fob Watch have been published in the December issue of The Cannon’s Mouth. If you’ve not read them before, please check out the poems below, previously published on this site.
http://giorgethomas.com/2011/10/13/laugharne-the-home-of-dylan-thomas/
http://giorgethomas.com/2011/10/10/fob-watch/
i made a boo
December 8, 2011
I made a boo.
Start again
stick together with glue.
But before you walk
don’t forget
what’s stuck under your shoe:
Fragments of love
that were broken
by you.
You made the boo.
I made a boo:
walking around
I ran into you
And saw you there
holding another
girl through.
Waiting around
to see if this girl
will do.
Hoping that
you’ll come back
to me soon.
I made a boo,
and that boo was you.
Copyright Giorge Thomas
** published by Nineteen-O-Splash and Fresh Magazines
i am a goat
December 8, 2011
I’ve worked it out. I am a goat. Yes, it’s my star sign and some might think that foolish for me to believe in, but I am. Goats are tenacious little fuckers. They spend all their lives climbing fucking mountains, never on flat ground. They don’t complain. It’s their life and they just get on with it. My life is fucking Everest. So yes, I am a goat.
Once, when I was a kid, Aunty Anne took me to the Adelaide Zoo. This was back in the days when elephants and giraffes walked around a concrete enclosure, the elephants only joy was to be sprayed down with water every now and again, the giraffes to eat hay out of mangers set high in the air. For some reason, there were goats at the zoo. When I think about it, the enclosure was probably a petting zoo for us kiddy-winks. We were all given paper bags filled with grey pellets to feed to the goats, but when one wasn’t fed fast enough he began eating away at Aunty Anne’s dress. Though she would have called it a frock and it would have been purchased, I’m almost certain, at Joyrene’s ‘Lovely for Ladies’. Goats will eat anything. So will I, actually. Therefore I am a goat.
Goats do not spend half their life traipsing around the difficult and treacherous terrain of a mountain to then go, ‘ah, fuck this, I didn’t sign up for this shit. I’m just gonna hurl myself off that cliff there.’ No. they’re goats and they just keep slogging away because that’s there lot in life and there’s nothing they can do about it. They were born on that mountain and they’ll live on that mountain, thank you very much.
Yes, I’m a goat. But it’s pretty hard to climb the fucking mountain when someone’s just cut your legs off.
journal
December 8, 2011
One day I would like not to live in pain, but just have an average kind of day where I’m not hurt by the disease within me, or should I say diseases. There’s so many now, I’ve lost count.
Diseases in my body, diseases in my mind. I know that they’re not linked, yet I feel it unfair, sometimes, to not have the opportunity to have just one thing wrong with me.
I would like to wake up and not have to medicate myself just to be able to smile, answer the phone, or function as a normal human being.
I would like to feel part of this world, instead of fighting every day.
I would like to see the good in everything, instead of the bad.
I would like to not have to push through. Sometimes I wish I could just be without the struggle.
People look to Christmas with hope, with love, with excitement. I look to it as just another thing I need to get through.
This is how I’m feeling today. I’m sure tomorrow I’ll feel different. Or maybe the same. Regardless, though, I’ll trudge through.
Kidwelly
December 5, 2011
Kidwelly Castle
Grass carpeted the grounds at Kidwelly.
It was so green and so fine
That by appearance it seemed to be fine velvet.
A green tattoo that did not allow me to see
Back hundreds and hundreds of years
To barn animals, foot-soldiers, peasants,
Straw-covered, manure-covered and filth-
Covered ground.
Standing there among the green I felt peace and tranquillity,
At odds with the hustle and bustle from the past.
If I were Queen I’d prefer the green of the lawn,
And I’d rope it off with little signs: “Keep Off The Grass”.
christmas brilliance
December 5, 2011
I kind of feel sorry for those poor bastards that work in department stores and supermarkets. It’s bad enough that for the past two months I’ve been irritated when hearing Christmas carols playing whenever I’ve walked into one. Imagine how they’re feeling, though! They’ve been having to listen to them for, like, two months now. Horrible annoying carols by Mariah Carey or Christina Aguilera. Surely, they’d be going mad.
It’s the 5th of December, right? Kids still in school, maddness not quite started. Apparently so. Popped into a shopping centre today to buy a book for one of our friends kids overseas. I don’t normally attempt any Christmas shopping until, like, the week before Christmas, to which I’ll then be completely stressed at having to do everything all at once and curse Christmas in its entirety. Yet today, 5th of December, I remind you, the shops were mad! People every where. Kids everywhere. Fights going on in the carpark at that one loan space left available. Department stores looking like Santa had come personally to throw up all over the place, everything was so sparkly. It’s so ridiculous that you can walk through those stores and come out the other side covered in glitter even though you hadn’t been anywhere near any of the decorations. There were already kids crying in the toy department (which they insist on putting right near the entrance where you walk in so even those of us without kids are subjected to the complete horror that is the toy department. Kids throwing massive tantrums, ‘what do you mean Santa can’t afford it? He’s santa!’ Mother’s complaining about the cost of everything though insisting on buying their children not one but several expensive items. People muttering to their friends about the ridiculous cris cringle idea and ‘what the fuck am I going to get them?’ questions that always arise.
I love how in big families the decision is often made to do a cris cringle or secret santa to take the pressure off everyone. Yet inevitably you’re given the name of a cousin or aunt you don’t really know very well, certainly have no idea what to buy for them and have a limit of $20 which in this day an age you get absolutely nothing for. So everyone ends up with something they don’t really want – another useless trinket, what’s more, the whole secret santa thing is often voided by families deciding that in their immediate family they’ll still do presents so you often end up with double the stress.
My parents are quite Italian in their gift-giving. We get money. Yes, yes, it is nice to receive a present, to open a present, but fuck me, sometimes I understand why they do it. In actual fact, this year, when Dad hands over the crip $50 bill like some forlorn bank teller, I have a right mind to hand it back to him as his present. Or better yet, let’s just keep our money in our wallets and save all of us the hassle.
I can’t believe I’m already getting anxious about this. Trouble is, I cannot avoid shops for the next twenty days. You know, I’ve got to eat. I can’t go around with my eyes closed to avoid looking at all the blinding tinsel. I can’t walk around with my ears blocked to avoid Mariah Carey’s cat-like trilling as she makes her way down the octives in some obscure take of a Christmas carol trying to prove to us all what a gifted singer she is. Yes, we know. Now shut up, you no longer have to convince us.
In actual fact I’d be quite pleased to give up on the whole idea of Christmas all together. Well, all the crap parts of Christmas. Like me having to buy gifts for eveyone else. Perhaps they can all tell me what they want, buy it themselves, and just present me with a receipt on Christmas day, to which I’ll reimburse them for.
I think I’ve done it, really. I’ve just come up with a whole new way of celebrating Christmas. Receipt day. Christmas is the one day a year when you can go out and buy that ridiculous thing you’ve always wanted but could never justify having and just get someone else to pay for it. Instead of turning up to Christmas lunch with a bottle of wine or a Christmas cake, everyone will just turn up with wallets full of cash.
I’m quite brilliant indeed.
laugharne: the home of dylan thomas
October 13, 2011
Dylan Thomas' Boathouse; Laugharne
On our recent trip to Wales we drove to Laugharne to visit the home of Dylan Thomas. As you can see by the pictures, it really is the most beautiful place in the world. Dylan Thomas’ boathouse was one of the most inspiring places I’ve been to. Whilst there I wrote the poem below, Misted Sound. I hope you enjoy the poem and the pics.
Giorge
xx
Misted Sound
You can breathe by the sea of the stars
And the sun
And the overhanging clouds
That envelope the soul
The mind
And the eyes that see.
You can wait by the tide
As the gulls
Sing your tune
As the wind whips your
Hair
And mist freshens your face.
You can lose yourself
In the sand
In the marsh
By the cliffs
And to the sea
But you will not drown
In Dylan Thomas’
Town.
His voice is heard miles
Round not just here
In this misted sound.
© giorge thomas
Another spectacular, yet daunting view of Laugharne
