My mind is a street café

Most people can become very poetic when the black dog bites. The irony sneers at me when I feel the weight of intensity, but my desire to pen it down dawdles somewhere in reality. 

I suppose that’s not true. My desire isn’t dawdling. It is using every single bit of energy this body can muster to get through the day. To get through the morning. I try and hold on to reality. That is the problem, I think. I should let go and just give in. But I fear if I ever let go of the last bit of my capacity to be complacent in life – I will drop out of reach. I can say that I don’t care, but I suppose I do. Otherwise I would have let go years ago.

Also, these days books are a dime a dozen. Everybody is a writer. Everybody gets published. Saying “I wrote a book” holds little weight. Saying “I am a writer” means nothing. Hemingway is dead. F Scott Fitzgerald, Cohen. All dead. And in this new wave of life where every second person is adding “writer” to their CV, the muddle that it creates in a dying industry gets trampled even further - until all that remains is a dirty footprint on the payment of life. No more dirt roads. Paradise is paved.

I suppose I never did want to write a 'self-help book' with knowledge of how to outrun the black dog. I suppose my life would be less of a fight if I could just learn to walk with it. No leash. No training it with commands to 'heel'.

So my thoughts are stuck in a street café. It’s passed midnight and apart from 3 people sitting in opposite dimly-lit corners, the place is empty. The smoke hanging like a dramatic curtain reeks with the stench of day-old hope, left behind by the masses. The silence rings in a new day. Time to nip the cigarette and have one last one – for the road. - As I get up, the dog gets up with me and we both head out the door.