Time For Truth - July 22 2002

06.52 am I fed the cats about 6.17, two minutes after waking up and
stumbling downstairs because it is Monday again and I have to go to
work. Its that thing I do during the week. I put on The Modern World as
I like to listen to something when I am online, last night I listened
to Andy Warhol album for ages.

Yesterday dawned as it usually does and about three hours later I got
up, fed the cats, posted my journal online, wrote my diary and then
played my guitar again, after breaking another string, I switched to
the Stag Strat and began turning the volume up till at what point I am
sure it could be heard down the end of the street. Then I had a bath. I
pulled on the shirt I wore last night, my battered Levis and played the
guitar again, but more quietly. Then I rang ... and was a long time on
the phone. Then my wife got back from Leigh where she had been for a
coffee and I hadnt been dressed at the time, on account I had been
playing the guitar all morning. I had to go across the road and found
out that my family had all zoomed off in my mum and dad's car and my
sister had her mobile phone switched off, so didn't speak to my brother
at all.

I walked up the middle of the road carrying my mobile like a gun and
then went back in the house. I put on some different music and listened
to that, then I went online and I had a long chat with another mate of
mine, at times being incomprehensible. A good question: am I happy? No,
I hope to be but right now I am confused.

So I had a time for truth with my wife and we spoke about this, that
and the other. And it is the first proper chat about t.t.o I have had
in some months if not years. There are lots of things that are wrong,
and brutal honesty works far better than a box of Black Magic and a
bunch of flowers, which although nice I have always equated with guilt.
So many people think that buying flowers occasionally is the cure but
it isnt, you need to talk, you need to open up your heart and look
what's inside sometimes. It hurts. It may not make the hurt diminish
but you do feel better. A bit.

I went back on chat and talked with ... till 10.30 then I watched Big
Brother and then I was chatting with them again. And they waited for
me.

I have got the digicam working finally so that I can press a button and
take pictures while it is connected to the computer. Apparently they
work as well. I broke the last camera. And the camera of course takes
pictures of you as you really are, just there.

I am looking from a high window and I see the world below and I see
people walking by below in the street and each one of them has an
umbrella in case the sky cries on them. The answers may be out there,
or they may be inside my head. I am not sure.

There are people I love and care for, and they are important to me. And
life, what do we want to do? What matters to us? Where are we going?
Where have we been? And its letting people inside that matters. Real
issues can never be sugar coated.