Mood +5 feel normal, haven’t gotten down at all today. possibly some prodromes of hypo-mania.
Went down Birmingham to sort out a few things for a trip to Snowdon this weekend. Decided just to go, try and make something of the holiday whilst I’m not working and am still waiting on a few jobs etc. Bought a lot of stuff that I should use again. It felt rational enough and I am not so strapped for cash.
Got a fleece, waterproof, scarf etc. Managed to prevent myself from buying the complete Arden Shakespeare, though it was only &25, and Anthony Clare’s In the Psychiatrist’s Chair III despite the fact that it had Tony Benn and Kay Redfield Jamison, among others in it. I have been reading one of his with Ken Dodd – who I saw and who appeared to be an interesting eccentric on a TV interview recently – and R. D. Laing, probab;y why I got the book [from interest in his case rather than belief in his ideas, which even years back were not compelling to me in the least, or, certainly, I stood aloof from them, thinking his 10 day psychosis or whatever it was, where he mentioned a man who believed he could influence others and that he didn’t feel qualified to comment on the truth of such a statement, was similar to the under-reasoning of mine when manic at the Goile and at Shawn Avenue – 04.10.01]. It also had Clare Rainer in it which was interesting. Anyway, I am constantly watching out for myself in bookshops now, and had to laugh when, intrigued, I read of Kay Redfield Jamison having once bought many copies of Penguin books one time so as to make a colony. I must have been feeling sanguine. Anyway, I convinced myself out of buying these, and Noam Chomsky due to the fact that I would go to the library and because I have more than enough to read, have a book of Chomsky’s from the library which I have barely started and, because I had already had my debit card ask for authorisation due perhaps to the amount of spending that day and due to having dipped into my overdraft. (They asked for my telephone number and postcode etc., and I wasn’t prepared to wait or coinvinced that I was in such need of the books that I should get some money out and return.)
I have been designing cameras and bikes. Decided that cameras should have two roles of film in, at the top and bottom, perpendicular to the lens rather than behind the mirror, and that Mountain bikes would be far less fiddly if they only were driven by a shaft and enclosed gearbox rather than the proven mess of a chain. I was thinking about this last night, aware, of course that it was ludicrous, but what if? There is a place for such eccentricity, of course, [retro. 19.11.00 I still know there to be, and I can’t scorn myself for this, however bizarre a time it was. I can perhaps even romanticise it. [here, Salinger style, and in a purely ironic fashion are some parenthesis. No, I was going to say, I can romanticise it but don’t. I simply think it valuable and infinitely morally superior to laziness and a lack of effort. – 04.10.01]] there is just that dilemma about whether the price is worth paying; that “dilemma” that keeps us on the wrong side of the tracks.
I had decided to do something about that. Ordered not only the Kay Redfield Jamison autobiography that I had stoppped short of one-click oredering beforehand but also a guide to sex and the artist’s and writer’s yearbook. If I don’t go mad, I’ll get a shag, and if I can’t do that then I’ll write a barely worthwhile radio play. But seriously, I think I was thinking (here goes the retrospective rationalisation) that me, like B_____ faling asleep on Karen at Jayne’s party, will be just too naïve if ever I try to catch up on what I have missed, on what everyone else is forever at. Right now I want none of it. [retro. 19.11.00 And right now of course I’m desperate once again for someone to hold, share moments with, fuck.] I have heard that Jayne has met some guy in Ireland and I wasn’t that pleased to hear that. It just seems so superficial, she was there for a long weekend. They are texting each other. I’d be mad not to want to be mad. Who’d want to be sane amidst such insanity? I really am out of step with the world, and at times – and I believe I mean my more objectively lucid moments – I think I prefer the way I am. I have long known that I have missed out. I have been a virgin for too long and am too romantic. What I wanted was to meet someone – some ONE – that I care about, then have a caring relationship in which sex is one important but in many ways peripheral part. And dealing with abstruse (in terms of my empathy) sexual and emotional histories is not what I want. To be seen as inadequate because inexperienced, and to accept that when my worldview is different. To apologise for it or make excuses, that would be too much to repudiate in myself, and far too much of a compromise. Jayne had had sex with one guy, perhaps now two, I don’t know nor understand, and these figures, I hate to say it, don’t seem to be for want of trying. [retro. 19.11.00 I am of course being grossly unfair and I know it, though perhaps was unaware as I wrote here, but I was upset, disillusioned and perhaps hurt.] Who’d have ‘em. Fickle. From Andrew Marvell’s coy mistress to this. And prefering my state by far than those destined only to be facetious, ironic, drunk, one of the lads.