Leaving The Past.

I write this without edit, consideration, contemplation. or any thought about the interpretation it may evoke. I know this is somewhat selfish to do, but it is what it is - and I am what I am.

I sit here now on my bed, in the summer of 2012, wondering what is going to become of the future? It is a question I nor anyone else can answer. But one thing I am certain of, is that with positive thinking, a good attitude to the human race, and a hard, consistent work ethic, tomorrow may not be wonderful, but it is unlikely to be as God damn brutal as the past twelve months. So I move forward trusting my true nature; which is, thankfully, a pretty kind, compassionate one. I am far from perfect, and have off days - in my case, an off day is a pretty awful sight. But in general I carry an ethos of live my life my way, and let others live theirs in their own ways too; what right do I carry as an authority to others anyway? It is their life, and we are all mortals; together alone, trying to find a means to enjoy the crazy circus of life on Earth.

One of these ideals I carry is that I never let the past linger upon the present. I view yesterday as a time where we should take the good and the bad experiences, learn from them, try to become better people internally, and move on; in reality, you cannot change what your eyes once saw, only the ways in which they see them now. Dwelling on mistakes, dark corners, empty choices, errors beyond your meaning... what is the point? Life is too short, and anyway, everybody makes mistakes - this is why we have today, as it affords an ability to rectify them - whether within ourselves, or to the outside world.

So when I am around those who do nothing but wallow in the past, it takes me back there. I wouldn't mind if they were happy recollections of all the lessons learned and funny memories, but they are not. It is usually negative refractions used to excuse immature defence mechanism acts of today. Once upon a time, it was funny, now - at the age of 31, I just feel sorry for those I meet who are like this. It then takes me back. It makes me question my upbringing, the education I allowed to slip away. The lost friends, partners. The places I stayed too long in, and the places I should have stayed in longer; I am suddenly around negativity, and much like Harry Potter with the dementours, I can feel my soul being slowly sucked away from within.

So I walk away. I walk away in search of another of the millions of souls who live to love. Who do not judge, moan, criticise a world they have zero idea about, and in general drudge through the day in internal misery. I find them, I build friendships, communication, and good associations, and try to open doors which the same shitty past once told me I have no right to open, and even if I did, are only full of hideous demons inside. Well, I opened many of those doors, and I haven't found any demons yet. In fact, most of the demons I ever knew, were already beside me, masquerading as false angels (bit like most political parties, I guess); it is amazing how darkness fears you finding light, more than it does in itself.

Yesterday I played Chess and cards with my nephew and niece. Astounded by their intelligence and liberated natures, I looked at them and saw the future. I viewed the promises and potentials which we can only imagine they will achieve. And as someone who believe themselves to be a good judge of talent, these two have the entire world at their ever-growing feet. I see the same in my other nephew and niece too. Though all still too young to see the best of them, why would anyone wish to waste time on an unchangeable negative past, when they can consider so many positive potential futures - especially in this new, incredible generation?

So fuck the past. In all honesty, it bores me now. I have had many wonderful memories, but am too busy creating new ones to think about them. And for all the bad visions of my former days? This is why the word "philosophical" exists. Seriously, to all the negatrons out there... it just aint worth the energy.

I now look forward to watching England at the Euros tomorrow. Yes, they have done little in 46 years. But when on the field of battle, do you think any one of those professional footballers, ever think about it?

Lee.

The Individual Spirit.

The human race live simultaneously, in two separate worlds... 

World one, is where the few convince the many to be a form of unquestionable reality. Media outlets, politicians, religious leaders, government officials, and all elements of those in power who manipulate the perceptions of what most people consider truth, rule this land with iron-fisted ferocity. This a world where insidious bullshit has reigned supreme for the last ten-thousand years; where black people were inferior to their white counterparts, women carried no right to personal opinions, and non-believers to the Catholic religion, were going to spend an eternal afterlife, trapped in hell. As a mere few of the myriad of examples, they all served to keep its inhabitants drugged up on a diet of fearing one another, whilst believing their paths created stronger personal growth - therefore attaining greater replication value, relative to one another.

Some of these beliefs change through the needs of a greater good. Others, never do. In the 21st century, this world believes the poor are amoral anarchists threatening all walks of freedom, who God forbids to reach higher than the diet of television and ignorance handed to them. Individual thought is a form of neurotic mental illness, manifesting in people who are a daily threat to our lives, to be avoided at all costs. And internal validation, only arrives through external conventional means; work, family, blindly accepting the rules, etc - all achieved along passive avenues. The rules of this world, are in effect... complete bollocks.

World two, is the space which exists within the constructs of your own mind. This is a place where black and white is just a colour - aware no other animal remains dumb enough to use skin tone as an excuse of separation, as much as a land where human beings are defined by the size of their spirit, and not their house. It is where you listen to music nobody else like, read books which make no sense to anyone but yourself, and have all kinds of crazy and silly thoughts; ranging from the sexual, to the sarcastic. Here you desire to live in the wild, and resent the absurd shit of world one, barraged into your head on a daily basis.

This is also a world nobody can taint or design beside yourself; you paint the rules, construct the laws, and are the sole arbiter of its moral infrastructure. It is sometimes brutal, raw, and ruthless, and may force you through all forms of dark and dangerous alleyways - mostly from its interaction with world one. But it is your world, and inside it's very private walls, anything is possible... anything. In essence, it is self-employment of the psyche - the hours are brutal, it is constantly misunderstood, and often a very lonely place. The pay-off, however - once you reach it, is a life many will only ever dream of.

Somewhere along the corridors of time, nature will force a concious choice upon you; do you choose world one, and readily accept reality in terms of mass percentages; spending your days seeking acceptance, through the agonising eradication of the real, genuine you? In order to feel a false form of validation by those who play the same game, for the exact reasons you do? Knowing, yet denying, how this suppression will slowly eat you alive as you become yet another actor in a play, where the lines are 100% ad-libbed, and no-one cares to watch on?

Or do you choose world two, and look at the life before you square in the face with the burning passion of two determined eyes, blazing a ubiquitous fire of human emotion. Peering forth to convey a message saying "You know what, world one... fuck you! I am going to view this game in my own way, on my own time, in the way I believe it is meant to be done. My heart will always be in the right place, and my rules never hurt anyone, and they all make sense to me - and a lot of yours are shit anyway. So here's a raised fat middle finger, a joker-esque smile to let you know I will drift in and out of your little world to suit myself, and a firm nod to the essence who controls the Earth, knowing they approve of my decision to be true to me, and only me!" Ask yourself in all honesty, which world sounds more appealing?

Conformist followers exist in world one, and reap it's hollow rewards. And yet, the majority are miserable, and travelling along a black hole, which leads to an abyss. The individual spirit lives in world two, and is free in a way the habitants of world one could only imagine - but don't have enough courage to face the potential risks, which arise from doing so. 

To all those in number two, I love you very much. To the rest - still in in world one... I ask you to give this side a try - even if just for a moment; it is so much more fun. You know you want to...

Lee.

Starbucks; The Spirit Versus The Shirt.

"Feel free to s**t anywhere."

I'm talking to Elena; a hairdressing student and Part-Time barista at Starbucks. She is a petite Romanian, with a sharp dress style and laser beam eyes - which, if I couldn't sense the innocent kindness they hold, would probably scare me a little. Like all the staff who work here in this corporate coffee shop, they are professional and polite; even though the controlled frustration often manifests through momentary expressions, at dealing with a consistent barrage of bullshit, from people who have as much money, as they lack in dignity.

It is late afternoon on a Tuesday, the store is two-thirds full, and I am about to drain my lizard before I venture home; a by-product in the lifestyles of both fitness freaks, and alcoholics. Entering the commode, I glance south to see the clear white toilet lid covered all around the back and its basin, in one inch thick, dirty brown diarrhoea; this human waste has been sprayed all over, and it smells disgusting. The previous week - when someone had left half a turd on the toilet floor was bad enough, but this was a level even pub bogs in Hounslow would be shocked at.

My initial thought is the culprit is still in the store, and they know it. But it could be anyone; for I have learned perception is reality for the masses, but not independent minds. In a flash I consider the staff, and how one of them will be forced to clean this mess. I have spoken to all of them on separate occasions, and they are not just slaves for hire; they are spiritualists, aspiring journalists, DJ's, exercise junkies, ecologists, and all forms of ideals, which their uniform tries to shame them away from remembering, the moment they place it upon themselves. It is clear they are far better than the place they work in, and often, the people they serve too - who probably believe they attain more worth, becuase society has told them money carries greater value than a human soul; happily forgetting how God created the soul, whereas humans invented money.

I find Elena and let her know what happened - aware this billionaire company shorten staff hours to save money, and she is the only one free. She knows, but has not yet seen the damage. I explain to her how it is not so much a question of why someone did it, as to how they physically managed to in the first place? (Squatting on the seat, whilst trying to download I-tunes on an I-Phone, my only prognosis). I know she will have to clean it, and I feel a surge of sorrow for her - she wants to fashion hairstyles for a living, not wipe down shit of filthy animals, hiding behind the motionless expressions which people in shopping centres all seem to wear with ubiquitous fashion.

I leave the store, and the place never feels the same again. This was a month ago. I look back and wonder why this feeling lies within me. It then hits me... I am alone. I say please, thank you, ask how their days are going, and clean my own waste, not to curry favour - at least, I don't believe so, but because it is how I imagine my ideal world to be, and how I - if I was on their side, would like to be treated. Not as a product, a walking prop, or a fucking dogsbody to cater to everyone like some legal slave, but as a person. A person has feelings, emotions, and I am certain beyond a few fetish freaks out there, none of them relish the thought of cleaning up someone else's shit, literally.

So with a few exceptions; those I know, and the twenty percent or so, who have enough dignity to see the spirit as opposed to the shirt. I have a message to the customers who frequent Harrow Starbucks; go fuck yourselves. You can't fool me with your flash phones, expensive shoes, and empty bravado putting yourself over - an act of the insecure, low-intellectual. To me you are animals - dirty, low-rent, uneducated, slaves to the mercy of overdeveloped self-gratification and underdeveloped self-respect. I don't want you all to change and begin binning all those paper cups and empty sugar packets, but cleaning your own turds would be a perfect start.

Beyond all this, It leaves me needing a new place to write, as I just don't get that same feeling of magical, muse like inspiration, I had in Starbucks Edgware based cousin. The staff are a beacon of light, and I like them all; in an I don't really know them, but they seem cool kind of a way. I just wonder if that same person who shit everywhere would have been so careless, had another customer seen them entering, only a few minutes previous.

Elena cleans the toilet. One day she will move on, create a family, build her future, and - like the rest of them, Starbucks will be a distant memory. The customers will change too. Unfortunately, none of the acts inside, ever will...

Lee.

Without The Mask.

It's funny how time changes perception...

As a thirteen year-old in 1994, I took my youngest brother to the cinema for a viewing of Jim Carrey comedy "The Mask". It was a pretty successful movie, and helped launch the careers of both him and Cameron Diaz; two actors of greater talent, then their credentials currently afford them.

I loved the movie, but more so, the central character; once he donned Low-Ki's wooden ornament and turned into a bald-headed, super-confident green man, with pearly whites and a sparkling suit. I never saw anything in Stanley Ipkiss, for he was too kind and compassionate; as in, gutless. Whereas with The Mask, I admired his raw energy, crazy antics, ability to make every last set of eyes centre on nobody but him, and his anarchic desire to cause havoc everywhere he went, without any form of remorse or compassion - (within reason; I wouldn't have liked him had he thrown a Dog into a river, or committed rape - Vivid Videos porn-parody department, take note.)

Watching it again, as an adult of 31 years of age, I expected to feel the same love for the rubber-man; as I revisited his array of emotionless exposition. The bank robbery, impeccable seduction of Cameron Diaz, imaginative use of hammers and car parts, and any other shit he could conjure up to indulge my impressionable eyes. Unfortunately, ten minutes after the transformation of Stanley Ipkiss into his alter-ego; around the moment he morphs a Balloon into a Tommy Gunn (the weapon, not the foolish boxer in Rocky V), and begins firing rounds at a group of amoral yet innocent hoodlums (as a child, I never considered he could have committed murder from this action), my mind started to echo one sentence, over and over; "Blimey, this guy is a fucking prick!"

I mean seriously, how big an ego does The Mask have, to the point he empties the vaults of the bank he works at for no reason whatsoever, destroys his own apartment corridor (pretty stupid, when you think about it), overtake a gangster run nightclub whilst pulling the bosses missus, and turn an entire Police unit into a conga line? While funny in parts, I sure wouldn't want the guy as a Prison cell mate, go on a long drive with him, or worst of all, invite him to a funeral. Beyond some acid crazed warehouse rave in the middle of nowhere, you wouldn't - and most likely, couldn't, take the dude anywhere. 

In many ways, the mask reminds me of those you meet, who are abundantly over-the-top, the first time you are introduced; they leave you really excited for a few days, yet shortly after this, you become sick to death of hearing them, seeing them, and most of all, being in the same room as them; If an empty vessel does indeed make the loudest noise, then The Mask is by far, the emptiest vessel of them all.

Perhaps I ignore the deeper message, and the knowledge the concept is a lot darker than the young audience the producers aimed for; forgetting The Mask is in fact a way of releasing all the main characters inhibitions and Machiavellian desires - even though they eventually serve no purpose; as he discovers the nice, genuine guy he is without it, is a real piece of gold. Shit, the smoking Tina Carlyle even falls in love with him - whereas she learned to despise green baldie face, after realising he was nothing more than a gimmick, hiding away a multitude of substance. 

The more I write this, the more I realise the real character underneath is actually quite beautiful - so always be who you truly are. As far as The Mask is concerned, any time I think of him, I only ever hear the word, wanker! I am now too frightened to re-watch that old childhood favourite, "Commando".

Lee.

A Beautiful Cycle.

My Dad: The Bingo hall was once a cinema, I used to go there with your uncle.

Teenage Me: (Thinking) Well it’s no longer there, and you don’t any-more… so why would I give a shit.

As a child, my Dad regularly bored me with random musings about his youth, in and around our local area of Edgware; North-West London's resident urban dumping ground - home to a brutal poverty, mixed in with fierce reality. Whenever he mentioned any long vanquished monument, his voice resonated love and compassion – like an uneducated form of Shakespeare, quite rare for a man I considered a professor of ardent cynicism. I never understood his compassion - the town was a shit-hole. 

The buildings he mentioned were of no value; places like the Green Shield Stamp factory, and a brass instrument manufacturers, no longer served their initial purpose. Why did he care for crappy companies which no longer existed? If only to pretend it was still 1975, he had a full head of hair, and Subbuteo was state of the art technology. I assumed he was merely stuck in the past; preferring to live in his memories, than to embrace new ones. I found this embarrassing, and pitied him.

Eighteen months ago, my next-door neighbour, Dennis, passed away from lung cancer at the age of 69; a harsh finale, considering he had never puffed on a Marlboro in his lifetime. Dennis was a simple, yet noble traditionalist; he believed in neighbours helping one another for the sheer sake of it, carried a dignity in the privacy of his affairs, and lived for little more than re-runs of The Professionals on ITV3, radio broadcasts of Arsenal matches, and taking meticulous care of his front garden. It was a beautiful sight; a rectangular 60ft x 40ft, open fortress, guarded by a perfectly trimmed 4ft high hedge, raised to stop the local kids using as a makeshift seat, whilst waiting for the bus. Covered by a lush, smooth set of grass upon its ground. And an eighty-year old tree – 8ft high and 6ft in circumference, glazed in luscious, soft green ivy, sitting proud in the dead centre. 

This past month, the property was purchased by a young Hindu family. Their first port of call was to call in a series of builders to downgrade the hedge, uproot the tree, and replace every ounce of natures beautiful grass, with ugly, cold, emotionless bricks – in order to fit their collection of cars inside. It is their property, it is their right, and the home is now their future to build upon. 

However, as I saw a portion of my history desecrated like discarded rubbish, it dawned on me how my fathers word rung true, and the memories he carried of the area, were indeed because it took him to a place when he had a full head of hair, and Subbuteo was state of the art technology. Only, not born out of pity, but potential. They represented the years when every door was open, and every possibility existed. When buildings were built for his generation, to establish their ideas, their hopes, their dreams; in essence, their unique imprint of existence to last an eternity - only to forget they themselves once replaced the dreams of a previous age, and would eventually be replaced too; as it has been since the dawns of time.

I see myself - fifteen years from now; a man in his mid-fourties, talking to his now teenage nephew Thomas, about the history of an area this young boy’s own Dad once grew up in. I sit back with a life experience he couldn’t possibly understand. I tell him I am no longer young enough to know everything, that one day he will be me, telling his own stories with an eye only time can view with clarity, and that the past and the future both need to be respected in equal measure; He won’t listen to me -  he isn’t meant to, I will simply smile to myself, and know. I will then – somewhere in a random conversation, throw in a line about Dennis...

Old Me: The driveway was once a garden, I used to help Dennis trim his tree.

Teenage Thomas: (Thinking) Well it’s no longer there, and you don’t any more… so why would I give a shit.

I will then have completed another element of the beautiful cycle. Eventually, just like me... he will too.

Lee.