My last effort to “look back”, at 2005, floundered on the rocks of futility; not the futility of words, nor the lack of new experiences to be quantified and qualified, but the endless flow of life before me. It became impossible to pause.

I don’t have any issues with its personality; indeed, I find Monday to be the poster child of the emo generation. However, just to confess: for the first time in a while, I have a genuine conflict of interest this Monday, one that will test – in a grimace inducing way – my entire value system.

The confessional aspect is that I am about to sacrifice my Monday night football (“soccer”) game, 120 blood-and-thunder minutes of the Beautiful Game (with its attendant adrenaline rush) for 129 minutes of “a Macedonia / Germany / Italy / Bulgaria / Spain” cinematic collaboration called Shadows.

It hardly seems fair.

I used to subscribe to the Times Literary Supplement; each new issue invariably arrived on a Tuesday, and it would be the focal point until, once religiously devoured, the following week’s arrival. Book reviews of scholarly, sometimes academic, tomes being the focus of the TLS, each issue practically re-invented itself anew; a well-chosen cover, unpredictable and bearing no relation to the content, made the TLS a true weekly.

One fixture was Hugo Williams fortnightly (?, I forget) “Freelance” column. I remember him asking in an ancient issue:

Is it being a past-oriented person that makes one a writer, or vice versa? I read recently that writers are rarely contented because they trespass on sacred ground.

Indeed.

This spring-cleaning of this domain – notwithstanding a much needed re-design – began with a simple culling of old links. The musical Memphis Cat is gone; downtheinkwell has stopped writing. totalitarianism today is birthing a child or three. democratic underground has gone all mainstream and relevant.

On a cheerful note, s p u r i o u s is back, while I’m glad pas au-delà is still around.

The biggest shock, however, is that “Politics” is no longer a category on these pages. How the times have changed me.

Much has taken place since then, not least my impending marriage to Jenny (see here for her one and only post on this blog). Yes, I’m guilty (and it’s true): love has drawn me away from maintaining this site and writing this blog. The whole experience has taken my quite by surprise – one never plans for such things. The nicest change has quietly crept into my being, almost unobtrusively. There is a new found calmness, … a serenity and felicity to the colour and tempo of life.

We’re due to tie the knot on May 26th. And May 27th, too. This Big Day is too big to contain within a simple 24 hour window. The two days will be full of fun, friends, family; with dinners, gatherings and a tea ceremony thrown in for good cultural measure.

After that, we’ll jet away for a fortnight to Mexico and Cuba (hence the travel guide purchases). After that, there is the small matter of making a home of our apartment at The Berth. And after that, a completed life.

Downtheinkwell takes pause and considers the value of interjection (Latin interjectus, from inter- & jacere to throw), in particular these meagre, everyday offerings that we write for no-one:

Before I made the decision to return to my blog I was questioning why I needed it and what I had to say. I often feel this is a vain and empty pursuit. My writing never pleases me, a condition I know most writers suffer from. But why post it here? What do I hope to achieve? Right now it is simply a means of motivation. I feel as if I have to post so I have to find something to write about.

I venture this: Sometimes I am in misery to explain why I write on the blogosphere, or at all. At times, this loss is compounded when the single, over-arching reason that held firm dissipates into manifold reasons; more often, when reasons turn to justifications, the urgency for fixtures and the one single certainty turns upon itself and collapses its very beginnings. In its quest, this impetus for certainty is self-eroding, accelerating its demise.

More difficulties arise when the framework – our constellation – keeps re-configuring itself, shifting as the manifold of stellular reason surge and collapse.

Nonetheless, I hold one thing and that is that I am an impoverished soul for neglecting this little space that I carve. A day, a week without writing means a day, a week without self, without creation.

Melatonin

Valet Parking

Flossing and baking soda toothpaste

Brushing my teeth in the shower

crispy Bacon

The “snooze” button on the alarm

Tangerine Altoids

Bare upper arms and shoulders

Straight lines – I realise this isn’t exactly a modern phenomenon but nonetheless, who can object to the gracefulness of two points enjoined in an eternal nexus of static yet serene rapture.

Let’s start with a definition. Movies are, always and everywhere, each representations of “a voyage of self-discovery”. Films, by contrast, are better viewed as works of art, having disposed the imperative to cultivate.

1. Se7en

2. Vanilla Sky.

3. 12 Monkeys

4. Memento

All the above play with and disrupt conventional narratives to create a new mode of presentation.

5. Good Will Hunting – read the script.

6. The Breakfast Club / St. Elmo’s Fire

A selection of favourite films:

Schindler’s List (1993), Saving Private Ryan (1998) and A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (2001). Its not often that a director dabbles in theological motifs, but that is precisely what Spielberg does with this unconventional trilogy. The undertaking? To ruminate on the meaning of the individual, particular and Universal.

Most of Oliver Stone’s work

Krzysztof Kieslowski’s The Double Life of Veronique and Trois Couleurs trilogy.

Quentin Tarantino: just because he’s our contemporary (and happens to be quite good) is no reason to dislike him or his works.

While subsuming the particular under its appropriate category can be a futile task, one is sufficiently “inspired” by High Fidelity – the movie of the book of the life? The male psyche revealed – to attempt a list. Worst thing is, guys like lists. Bruce recently saw the movie – and he said that the Rob character reminded him of me! Damm!

Things that make me relatively happy:

1. The company of friends, past and living.
2. A day tarrying with the negative and my muse to find me.
3. Awake at dawn with the sweetest of nothing in the air & her beside me.
4. A life with cigarettes; a day without. After close to eighteen years living with this damm craving, one is rather uncomfortable with the unbearable geekiness of being a non-smoker.
5. Matutinal reading on an autumnal day in Meyerinckplatz