Feels Like I've Written Before

I've probably written about some of this stuff before.

I wrote another post about breakfast a while back. I write a lot about breakfast. Not only on this blog, but on the pages of other notebooks. Breakfast and Trains. I write a lot about breakfast and trains.

No trains around here lately. I’d love one, though. Sleek, low slung, high-speed carriage, high-backed red chairs with fold down armrests and scattered with high-nervous company. I would love to bunch up into a corner, sitting with my back towards to driver's seat and my head resting on the big window. My earphones plugged in, I’d pump up as much Ella as I could find and just stare, watching the outside go by as I held as still as possible. Hold my ground, whilst everything else rushes past and away.

Hasn't been that much Breakfast either. I’m eating. I’m having an early first bit of something, but not that breakfast 'thing'. That early morning salvation that is a dance of compassion, care and activity hasn't been around me for a while now. Until this morning. This morning was one of the greats. One I will remember for a while to come.

Of Topography

Tallow Beach. 

The locals call it 'The Back Beach”. It runs from south under The Byron Bay Lighthouse, past Suffolk Park and ending down at Broken Head. How long that stretch is I couldn't tell you. I suppose I could look it up, but I’d rather not. I want to write about my memories of the beach, not of an image that is adulterated by another's perspectives. You can look it up, if you like. If you need to know. It's a long way. It runs a long way.

Insomnia Ain't No Kind Of Lady

Sleep comes hard now in Hollywood. Similar to before, but even harder now. Last time I was here, I converted that lack of sleep into early mornings for exercise. The fresh air – still crisp before the sun had time to take full effect - and the silent green sidestreets, would be followed by the muggy, filled air of a clanging gym. All done, showered and completed from with plenty of room to spare before a full mid-morning breakfast. Later, at night, I’d be served a heavy dose of drowsiness well before midnight. I'd finish work and almost run home to collapse into bed, whilst begging whomever takes such requests, for even thirty minutes more than four hours sleep. But that was before. That was last time.

Now sleep comes even harder than that in Hollywood.

Sure There Is

I've woken up thinking of live music gigs I've been too. Specifically, I’m trying to think of which ones were the best. I'm not sure why that is. It could have something to do with what I was listening to as I walked around Hollywood last night. Perhaps. I think there is probably another reason. I’m sure there is.

I consider myself lucky. I've managed to be at quite a few truly great gigs. That is lucky, for I don't go to that many. I’m held back by knowing that on occasion, I will have certain 'issues' with large crowds. It's easier to just avoid them and so, consequently I end up avoiding many gigs. There's a word for that sort of thing and you'll probably want to fling it at me. It's actually a little more complex than that and like so many of the quirks of my days, it involves a train in one way or another. I'm fascinated by trains and trains seem to be fascinated by me too. (Mostly it's Freight Trains of old and lore that have done me in, but in this instance it was the fault of a more modern, underground one.)

Bessie

“Bessie was more than just a friend of mine; We shared the good times and the bad”

That's a lyric from The Band song 'Bessie Smith'. It is an ode to the grand old dame of all blues singers. Bessie had long passed away before any of those boys were born and none of them ever got to actually meet her. They're singing about a connection they felt to her through her records. Not just a simple connection of recognition or empathy, but a connection of more than friendship. A bond, that was a reciprocated, circular, personal exchange. One that rose above convenience or ease and was strong and present in both the good times and the bad.

What a great bond to have. To know that because she had been there on both sides of the coin before, she would certainly be there again. She wouldn't change with the winds of time or the cast of a glance, because she was frozen in a moment on those records. They could put on 'Careless Love' and the emotion and the caution and the regret and the pain would sound the very same as it always did and leave them exactly desperate and hopeful. Bessie had been there. You could hear it in her wail. Bessie had probably been there much worse.

A Note and a Warning

This here post is an exercise.

I want to be a writer. I mean - A Writer. There's a difference.

See, anyone can write. Every monkey and his cousin has a blog or a tumblr or fancies their Facebook status update as concise, social decelerations. There is Twitter which is for those that are trigger happy with quickly constructed, oblique aphorisms, whilst hundreds of literary journal take submissions from those who take the time edit and re-edit. People all over the world, in all languages, write every day and they all do it for different reasons.

My reason? As I said, I want to be A Writer.

Laundry

“If all I had left was ten dollars, I’d spend it all on a service laundry.”



Some of my most intimate memories involve Laundry. In fact, many of them do. This sounds like an odd declaration – even in the context of other declarations made on this blog – so let me explain a little:

To you, the word 'intimate' may suggest moments shared between people. Moments of closeness experienced, understood and remembered only by them. To me, in this instance, 'intimate' means private, alone, quiet and personal. Laundry means all of this in my memories.