#8 - #8

It is sometimes hard to bear the loss of a friend's dearest and nearest even though the death does not come as a surprise. Death I suppose should never come as a surprise - it is the one thing we can be sure about. It is the loss, the missing person shaped hole which it leaves behind that is so devastating. What do you fill that hole with? Can you fill it at all? Over the years I have been always at arms length with death, but as the years grow closer, more and more people I know are affected by it and I draw closer to it too.

I remember how we used to laugh about it when we were young. My mother said that my grandfather's friend said that meeting up in kopi tiams was like playing Ten Little Indians - fewer and fewer people showed up. Do you want to be the last person to go, rather than the first? The survivor of a bygone era? Someone for whom nothing makes sense in the world anymore? Already I am feeling that for myself. Caught between a world which I do not want to be part of and a world which is fading away. More and more we must make what we have in our image but what happens if the material stubbornly refuses to co-operate?

The worst thing about being young is how shallow you are. I see this all the time. It is a shallowness which time and life experience may fix. I would not for all the tea in China be the age I was again. Never. I would never want to be a child, a teenager, a twenty something, be 30 nor 40 again. No. The best thing I can say about all those years is that I lived. I lived 100% of that time and 100% of that life. I had my sons. I worked in jobs that were rewarding. I went to places which were worth seeing. I did all of those things till I didn't want to do them anymore. Read books. Saw plays. Listened to music. I did it all. It was wonderful.

And now, now... here we are at the start of 50. I think 50 so far has been a double-edged sword complicated by bloody Covid, of course. And the divorce. For a start, it is wonderful to have all this confidence. however, it is also a bit unnerving to be on my own. Truth be told I was always on my own. Peter was never there. So I am to all intents and purposes a single mom. Yes he did the fun dad things, but really he did not make the commitment - he was basically there when it suited him. But here I am at 50, feeling like, for the very first time annoyed and dismissive of the world. The world which is being driven by idiots if they are my age, and young people who do not know any better. With far too much tech - it feels like a weirdly dangerous time for everyone. 

Perhaps leaving the planet is not such a bad thing.

This is the irony of the entire Covid debacle. I was hoping that the stopping all the clocks thing would make people think about their lives and the life of the planet, instead, in typical human fashion we opted for escapism. Even I did that. The disruption created a vacuum into which a kind of laziness became filler. A laziness and an irrationalness. People still wanted to go on cruises and got jabbed for that and found themselves on Covid infested ferries. I mean are people so stupid. People who were fanatical about everything during Covid booked themselves on next flights like lemmings and hypocrites. People who said let's think about this were silence. People who could not help themselves ended up either dying by all kinds of ilnesss including mental and spiritual and children, most disgracefully children were thrown to the dogs or their own parents which were often far worse.

It's just crazy. No wonder I'm depressed. I think if you are not upset you really are an idiot. I can barely bring myself to watch moronic TV like Taskmaster - how can anyone find that funny and all of fiction on TV now is either some kind of supernatural trite or superhuman OTT-ness. It is awful. I think I'm just going to spend the rest of the year just going back to books and art and drawing again. And music. At least in music there is redemption. And cleaning the house and gardening. What else is there really?

The tide of the pandemic is turning. After two years of the most idiotic contradictory nonsense, people are going well that's that. Their get out clause of course is - oh it is now endemic - except in Australia, god knows what they are doing there. But everyone now has gotten Omicron, and it has not touched the sides at all. Data on the Pfizer vaccine will now be released and we will all know what it means soon. Thank GOD I got Covid over the holidays. Thank fuck.

I am going to find my feet once more this year. Really take the year to peel back and to think about what life is about. I seem to have lost my appetite and my interest in alcohol. Covid seems to have taken that from me for the time being. Food is now not only functional it is also slightly revolting. Perhaps it is also because I am a bit depressed.

I have decided what my New Year's resolution is after all this, I know now. To focus on the things which strengthen me. That's what I will be doing.