One of the reasons I stopped writing erotica - apart from firstly being so bad at it but also my story having become a headache of character and plot progression complications - is that it makes sexual abstinence painfully difficult. But I think I've been using that as an excuse not to write for too long. So I'm going to start uploading pieces here, the first one is going to be about a powerfully intense and immersive dream I had recently. I know that most people hate hearing about dreams but my dreams are different from everyone else's .
Winter Resort Our culture has made winter a hybrid of emotions. The cold solitude and frosty unforgiveness of the wide snowy plain where I find myself - a strange hybrid of ski resorts I have been to in the past and a winter retreat from Season 2 of Netflix's "Slasher" series I watched a few months back. The warmth of a cabin and a toasty fire, the joyful nature of the solstice celebrations - family, community, and tradition. I don't think it's a coincidence that these rituals in the northern hemisphere historically happened in Winter. I've always believed that this is when farmers would have lacked the will to keep going without the break that the warmth only festivities can give. Pagans, Romans and Christians all gave their occasions their unique names and where there were churches, there were donations to be given and profits to be made. Commercialism made Christmas about shopping, street lights and German markets weeks or months before December and for those of us less religiously inclined, or simply less community driven there came the financially incentivised "New Year's Resolution". Gyms and yoga studios flooded with customers at the start of the year, online advertising agencies gave web surfers "opportunities" to schedule, categorise and analyse their hopes, dreams and ambitions. Naturally cold, alone and driven away from the community dream none of that really appealed to me. You'd think Valentine's Day would be the worst day for someone like me but actually, I've never paid much attention to the marketing or even remembered the date except for the plight of all the other lonely singles rammed down my neck as we approach that time of year. Typically I couldn't care less as we do. I prefer the natural brightness - the birth of hope, aspiration, growth and vibrancy - during a time like Spring but failing that, the New Year is good enough for me. I am more of a stoic than a nihilist though some might get the wrong impression about me - I understand. It's uniquely difficult to impose a positive interpretation on language that at surface level is negative. Essentially, I think we have to be prepared for the worst but I don't necessarily believe we have to live our lives like they are the worst. I don't know where I am on this plane, how I got here, why I'm here or what I was doing yesterday - it doesn't even occur to me to ask. I am inclined to just accept what is as if it never needed explaining. This is to say, "it is what it is": a tautology is something I've been told by the intellectually self-righteous is meaningless and therefore should be eliminated from our verbiage but I am inclined to strongly disagree. After all, the subtext to that statement was defined in the sentence before it and if I had not stated the sentence beforehand, it could have been intuitively deduced regardless. This makes the tautology like a riddle, really - you are not imposing meaning that doesn't exist, just working out what's already there. That's to say that what's clear is clear. I don't know or question what I'm doing here which is ironic because if I did, I'd probably become aware of a different reality. I stand here embracing the solitude of the cold but I don't feel it. There is a strange underlying warmth but I don't think it is the healthy kind - it is the self-indulgence of reminiscing in nostalgia, longing for and bathing in self-pity. I think back to the connection I enjoyed with you, your vibrant red hair, compassionate disposition and pale skin that was stark in the way it glowed. First time I saw you was outside a coffee shop and you froze as you looked at me from outside the door, not sure if I was the person you were meeting but knowing deep down you scurried around the corner nervously and started smoking in the outdoor seating. I tried to tap on the window to get your attention but maybe you did not hear me or maybe you just needed a minute to compose yourself. The lady sitting by the window stared at me as I uselessly tried tapping so I gave up and walked outside under the bright white November sky and you embraced me with a compassionate hug. I always thought that you glowed how words flowed when we spoke online. We had not originally shared opinions but we seemed to share values. We always had something to talk about and you always initiated with me, never reverse because you had a partner and truthfully I did not want to become attached. But I did and when you suggested we meet that first time I couldn't resist. In weeks or months to come when you stopped reaching out to me, I could have made more of an effort to initiate. And I tell myself things like how I didn't want to look like some kind of a stalker but it was not that. I felt validated every time you reached out to me and when that stopped because of a holiday abroad and a meeting ("date") postponed for a "date" that had no chemistry, it felt like something pure was ruined. I should have blamed myself but I blamed you. You did send me a message but I told you that the kind of attachment I had to you and the feeling of despair I felt was not healthy. I apologised and you stopped messaging me so I shouldn't be surprised. But then a year later you did and you were so warm and I was so happy to hear from you. I couldn't find it in my heart to shut you down again. We had so much to say to each other, I couldn't understand why you suddenly cut off from me again. And I did prompt you some days later and we talked again but once again you cut off. And for weeks, months ... some years I tried to delete you from my mind. I read articles about getting over exes - I mean you were never an "ex" but you must have been an "ex-" something to me. But everyday I thought about you and couldn't help but wonder how to reignite that connection. Now I stand here and put my finger in the cold snow and write all of this that you read now. It's illogical but everything I write is not drawn out like you would expect with a swollen, frosty finger making words in the snow. It flows out like spoken language, like how naturally words came to me when we spoke and I typed away at a keyboard. When I was a child, my atheist but catholic-raised mother wanted me to develop an unbiased opinion about religion. Really I think she wanted me to be culturally catholic in the same way she was but it wasn't long before I got bored of Sunday school and asked her to stop going. Before I left though, in one of the sessions they had told me a cryptic story about a group of men that were informed by an angel they must write a message for God using only their fists and writing on the wall. And all but one completed this task. The one who did not said he was "too afraid" that he would have nothing to say and I thought how ridiculous it was that the physically impossible nature of devotion to the divine sky-man was presented as "fear" and not "scepticism". They instructed us to perform the task and taking them to literally mean I must write a message - whatever it was meant to be - with my fist, I did not. And one of the women from the church asked me why I did not do it - "not fear!" I insisted. I tell this story now because I feel this way as I write my message for you - not an out-of-touch deity but a fundamentally down-to-earth soul. The snow is the wall, my finger is my fist. Everything is surreal, like I said I don't even know how I got here. It is just a few words in snow but it is so much more than that. It feels so real, so immersive, intense and powerful. That warmth in the middle of snow I mentioned earlier it is the image of your face and your hair I imagine as I type this out. Everything I tried to forget - thus the icy pangs of despair that electrically pump in my chest (where I have always felt negative emotions that I strangely enjoy). But what I say about you is hidden from you, so really this is just a secret message to myself. I simply tell you in a way that I will not directly reveal, the sadness and frustration I feel in your absence amidst feelings for you that will not wash away or be forgotten, even though I have no right to feel negativity towards you, I still do. But I don't say this in so many words, I say it in a seemingly endless stream of words what should be straightforward to express - perhaps you are the only person that could stop it. Somehow you find this secret message though - had I intended for you to read it all along? Now I am not outside in an icy plane, I am inside a coffee shop withstanding all the frost from outside. Purgatory? We sit there in warm, frosty silence and I enjoy my Americano. I know that you have read my vulnerable thoughts and there is no turning or running away. But I try to open my mouth to speak anyway and that's when, as per the bad ending no writer says you should ever end a story with: that is when I woke up, and it was all just a dream. __________________________ I can't hold any genuine resentment for you, even though you involuntary hurt me every day. I actually think you are truly amazing and beautiful. And a great source of creativity, so I will leave you with this, a soulful artist that always has had a way of breaking my heart a little more: youtu.be/ePT8ZAQvVek