Good Luck

I carry a penny for good luck. I do not seriously believe that it is anything more than a disc of common metal. It will no more protect me from misfortune than leaving out milk for the fairies will decrease the chance of you getting a cold.

Other common lucky charms are a mutant clover, the cut off and stuffed foot of a rabbit, a piece of blue glass in the shape of an eye, and necklaces with dying Jesuses on them.

The truth is that none of these things will protect you from harm. Nothing of that nature will.

The truth is that the only thing protecting you from the rapists, murderers, thieves and crazy people is the thickness of your clothing and the reliability of your social circles. And the best defense against them is a well soled pair of shoes and a running start.

I do believe that God watches us. But I think it is a cruel thing for me to ask him to protect me when there are so many that pray to him for nothing more than clean water. And let's face it, their prayers aren't always answered.

Luck doesn't exist. A lucky penny won't help me open a really stuck jar. But my Swiss army knife possibly might.

Just a thought.

Location:My Bedroom

Buzz Buzz Buzz

"Buzz buzz buzz.

Sorry?

Buzz buzz pizza buzz.

Yes please."

I ate my pizza tonight. David makes it every Sunday. Then we watch tv and Mr. Holmes complains that we are talking to much. It's pretty good. Of course, I'm not here every Sunday, but when I am that's what happens.

I wish my head wouldn't buzz. It's like thinking through fog. It's like listening through fog. Fog no one else can see. Or hear.

I knew a guy that didn't know how to spell the word "people" once. I explained to him how to do it, (p-e-o-p-l-e) but he just shouted at me. He said, "I can't spell it! I hate that word!"

Well I don't hate the word. But just like old dyslexic Daniel, I understand why some things are, and how they are done. I've even had them step by step explained to me, but I still can't do it.

My leg hurts.

Location:The Spare Room

Being King Is So Great

His death rattle lasted quite a long time. Hisssssss. I remember that. Like a tyre with a hole in it.

Anyway. Dead he was. Most defiantly. Emaciated, yellowed as a butter cup with his dying jaundice. His long white hair had been falling out in clumps for a few weeks now. Eyes as glassy as a toad's.

Everyone was so sad. And the worst part was the way they had thought I would be sad too. He was old, one hundred and seventeen. I hated the bastard. He was always pissed off that my dad and older brother had died before me and him.

Well, I say died. More murdered really. By me of course, not personally obviously, I have people. Jekob, my brother, loved hunting grizzlies. Who knew that he wasn't prepared for every single trusted member of his hunting party to all accidentally mistake him for a bear at once? My family is tough, but twenty seven crossbow bolts to the head kills anybody. Shake that one off Jek. Ah, Good times.

But Pop though, now there was a paranoid guy. They say Prince Donavan used to wear his stab vest while he was sleeping, and that in the ten years following the birth of his first son, he built up a resistance to every single popular royal poison there is in the history books. Had to try a few times with Dad. Fist couple of goes involved booby traps in bed springs and aftershave that melted your face. Sadly unsuccessful, but his screams where hilarious. However, even royalty has to crap. Paid a very resourceful young chap, named Henry I think, to plant a bomb right in his loo. Oh Henry, you knew your tricks. Too bad I knew more. Always be the second person to taste the champagne, pretty much deserved it for forgetting THAT.
Well, with Dad gone, Crowned Prince Dalesko I became. And the only thing between me and that nice shiny hat was maybe four weeks of bromide in his highnesses' tea. Natural causes they still think.

They did the whole "The Old king is dead, long live the blah blah blah" and absolute power was mine. I'm going to have a huge party after the official business is done with. And if the aristocratic babes won't dance with the king, well, watching them scream for mercy is just as fun. More sometimes.

Yep. I could get used to this.

Location: Bedroom

The Personifier Man

The Personifier. He walks from place to place, touching things and animals. Everything he touches becomes a person. That oak tree becomes a wise old man, that ferrari becomes a sassy lady in a red dress. The brown and while cocker spaniel becomes a helpfully cheerful little bald man. The Post box become a vigilant holder of letters, serious expression, firm grip on his cargo. The shopping trolleys are bored and uncooperative old people who carry your shopping, and have to be nudged along. Your loose change you dropped, as it rolls away around the Personifiers feet, are transformed into silly little girls running everywhere that will not do as they are told. The wind blows meanly rather than just coldly when the personifier is around. The sun smiles instead of shines. Sky doesn't rain, it cries.

Hands in the pockets of his humble brown jacket, he strolls around quietly, making everything that bit more alive and human.

The Personification of Personifying.

On The Bus

On the Bus back from Sydney, I frequently encounter people who are strange. Or at least, stranger than me, which means they are putting in effort.

The guy next to me wouldn't stop scratching his balls. It was like he was worried they were going to vanish.

The guy behind me had turrets, or autism or something. He shouted at everyone to take pictures when something even vaguely interesting happened outside. He continually leaned round to see if I wanted to have a drink of water, "You want a drink Mate? Mate, mate? Maaaaate?"And he played with a very irritating piece of velcro for at least 2 hours. I wanted to hurt him.

The woman sitting in front of me was huge. She could have eaten me for breakfast. She was an islander, and was speaking some variant of Indonesian to her friend, very loudly.

I fell asleep despite these distractions. My head fell forward, and hit her head rest. She took this as a studied insult. She poked me in the face with a giant finger. The woke me up thoroughly.

When struck by a strong surge of emotion, such as when a giantess is glowering at you over the top of your bus seat, your body tries to make itself look bigger and more threatening by fluffing out it's fur. Unfortunately, this tactic does nothing at all to aid me when the hairs on my body are so finely spaced and small that no amount of fluffing will make me look anything but silly.

Location: The Dining Room

Precious

When my cousin was younger, he would ask me if my possessions were 'precious'. He though that precious meant fragile. Valuable too, but in his mind mostly fragile. Diamonds are a precious stone. There are very few things on this earth harder than diamond.

We are all such fragile creatures. Made of breakable flesh and a mind that dies with it. Only the soul, whatever that is, lives on in the aftermath of our deaths.

You are precious to me. Wholly and completely I care for you without compromise. I fear your loss like I fear that the sun will not rise in the morning. A fine being built of only good intent.

Regardless of my non compromising love for you, I am only made and powered by my hate for my self and all my kind, a bitter shell of a being. My loathing gets me up in the morning, the idea that I will one day be sated, and apologized to. We meet a no point in the lines.

Despite my knowledge of this, I reject the idea that I am without use to the world. I reject the idea that I am without use to you and without positive attributes. Few enough see the world as I do. Perhaps you could one day learn to love this difference.

Until then I am as always disappointed, disillusioned and dissatisfied but content with my lot and the all too brief rays of sun that pierce the thunderheads.

I am always waiting for you, like a statue exposed to the elements I wait. But not in any kind of hope, for that emotion is alien to my nature. Only the wait that one has when walking and watching clouds, waiting to see what shape they shall take.

One day I shall have my satisfaction. You shall not provide it I highly doubt, but on that day as I clutch my still warm and beating prize, my mind shall bring to the fore a picture of you.

All I am precious island, is the writer. You are the words.

Location: My bedroom

Never Hope For That

Love is not hour long phone call
Love is not a shared milkshake
Love is not a dreamy expression
Love is not a pretty gesture
Love is not a hand in hand stroll
Love is not sepia tone photos
And love is definitely not fifteen minutes of sweaty bliss.

Love is dirt and mud and blood.
Love is duty and thankless work.
Love is swearing and hating and callus and tears and fear.

Love is ugly solitude long after you have forgotten what you were waiting for.

Love is the abandonment of dreams.

Love is the loss of who you truly are for another's sake.

Love is sacrifice, not gain.

Never hope to fall in love.

Location: Sydney, the flat