I got really lonely and desperate leading up to and during the Christmas period.
I always do this every year. Like a great many people I loathe the fabricated joviality, the sensation of the world closing down, shutting up shop, the enforced introspection and hollow 'sense of occasion', the bad movies and general lack of neurotic human buzz.
Its okay living on your own when the outside world is seething and boiling with relationships, connections, the Sturm and Drang of preoccupied humanity, pulled hither and thither by all those personal little gravities and workaday concerns.
When the planet briefly stops spinning like this, I find without the anchor of close family or my girlfriend near, I float off into cold interstellar space or am flipped into strange orbits of obsession, tangents of whimsy and oddity. But this space can be creatively productive as well as lonely too.
I always used to go to my mums until she died 3 years ago, the last couple of Christmas' have been marked by 2 day trips to my sisters, or rather I should say, test's of psychological and physical endurance, a lesson in how to feel a gooseberry. I always feel a bit nervous in family get-together's, always feel sort of in the way. But then again, I am definitely something of a loner. I do need other people but I need my own space so desperately sometimes.
But I do enjoy going to my sisters and seeing the kids, she's really the only family I've got left.
Well, apart from my mum's brother and my very estranged (and strange) father, you'd have to be Derek Achora or Doris stokes to have any chance of contacting the rest... if you see what I mean.
Anyway, this year there was a bit of confusion about exactly what I was supposed to be doing over the Christmas period: Was I going to my sisters, visiting my girlfriend in Scotland, or just spending the time in some kind of creative, angst ridden fugue? Ultimately, events so conspired that the angst ridden fugue appeared to be the easiest and laziest means of keeping my sanity.
The other options involved a rather vulgar engagement with long distance public transport or being tortured by my nephew and niece in that stress filled family environment that only Christmas seems to produce.
I know I've always felt a bit of loose cannon, a black sheep of the family since I fist started refusing to go to school at the age of around 6 years old. I kind of embraced that chaos really, found solace and support in the lonely existential heroes of Marvel comics. These guys were displaced, alienated, misunderstood and wounded souls, social transients who never-the-less had compensatory powers - the power to stand outside society, but at the same time to influence and use that society in an almost metaphysical way, like omniscient gods who'd had their wings clipped.
I realised way back then that being a social and psychic flaneur was my destiny.
(Still not sure what my specific 'superpower' is by the way...maybe the ability to piss people off? Or play the intro to Pinball wizard quite well on an old Spanish guitar where the strings are about 3 inches above the fretboard?)
My family have been less amused of course by my often self-imposed existential superhero status. My 4 month holiday in the sun at Wellingborough young offenders resort at the age of eighteen - as you can imagine - did little to soften their attitude toward their wayward kin(that's a tale for later.)
I did manage to briefly shock and awe their anxious sensibilities in a more positive way in my late twenties by doing an A-level foundation course, obtaining a very good degree in psychology and embarking on a Phd. I have a tendency to do this by the way - do fuck all for years and then one morning...BANG!!!
You could audibly hear the collective gasp of astonishment and relief:'At last! He's found his metier, his vocation, back on the straight and narrow, settling down and fitting in - Phew!'
Their joy was short lived however.
I enjoyed my undergrad years, being initiated into the dark landscapes of Foucault,the rich kaleidoscope of semiotic's, the paradoxes and ultimate mystery of human consciousness.I found that the hallowed halls of critical psychology provided some kind of academic grounding, a legitimization and explanation of my alienation and inability to fit in. I felt strangely at home for the first time.
Having 2 great tutors at that uni helped too.
You can't beat a couple of world weary old Foucaultian hippies to make you smile at the absurdity of the world and question EVERYTHING.
Unfortunately, the uni where I began my post-grad appeared to be populated by a bunch of careerists and rude upper middle-class boors, and I started to feel ungrounded and repelled by the very 'institutional' (prison?) feel of the place.
I left after a year of self-funded disillusionment (my inability to get a bursary or studentship helped with my decision.)
I felt somehow betrayed and hurt in the process.
Family were okay about it on the surface, but I could detect a certain confusion and even an unspoken 'I told you so'.
Anyway, after many years of working various jobs - garden landscaper, signwriter - I found myself unemployed last winter and pondering my future.
I know I thought! I'll go back to uni and do a research Masters (only a 12 month sentence) at Edinburgh uni. I'll be with my girlfriend and back to study again. Get myself a career and start being a responsible citizen. The deadline for submissions was early Feb, so my flat became a hothouse of intellectual endeavor, I was a man possessed, or should I say 'repossessed'... and ultimately dispossessed.
I was writing a research proposal that was the equivalent of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason while living on an a diet of tuna and rice, Golden Virginia, Co-op 99 tea bags - plus copious amounts of verbal encouragement from my girlfriend via the digital phantasmagoria called 'MSN'.
I'd always been fascinated by the gang of dissident writers, pranksters and cyber-tricksters collectively known as the 'Luther Blissett Foundation', or more recently - 'Wu-Ming'.
I'd decided to do a an in-depth investigation into the Blissett phenomena: what a great example it demonstrated for the growth of fresh cyber-movements who could act as multi-media 'communities of resistance' against late capitalist imperialism - blah blah blah.
I'd contacted Edinburgh about the idea and they agreed it sounded good - in theory.
Now began the hard work of hammering out a consistent and logically sound theory. Anybody who knows me, realizes this can represent something of a stumbling block - I love theorizing and digressing on all sorts of intellectual esoterica, but hate the petty details...like making it intelligible to other people.
I had my Christmas project to keep me occupied again. What Joy! Previous lonely Chrimbo's had been spent writing novels that had been aborted by January, embarking on an angst filled series of abstract expressionist paintings, learning the basics of Classical guitar, and one year, actually writing a rock opera based on a post-apocalyptic Britain...this was as shit as it sounds.
I got in touch with one of my old favored undergrad tutors who was willing to give me a reference, and he gave me the e-mail address for the other guy, who'd now retired to a Mediterranean island to begin a permaculture existence, far from the groves of academe and the psychotic crowd.
Unable to give me a ref because he was no longer officially an academic, he gave me so much more that initially blew my mind and kicked me upon another trajectory.
We began a sporadic but regular correspondence about life, love, olive groves,hydrophonics and the mid-life crisis. saying that, I've been having mid-life crises since about the age of 12.
We both agreed that my attempted return to uni was something of a 'stop gap' for lack of other ideas, and there were many different lifestyles and landscapes to explore, including just being yourself at the end of the day and no matter where you are, attempting to be as psychologically and materially independent from group think as much as possible.
I realize now more than ever, four months on, that a return to uni wasn't the answer, it would have been a defeat, throwing the towel in, being lazy and unmotivated. Some people can live that life...I realized I'd got my t-shirt years ago and the years of suffering involved in getting the full wardrobe and pension were too high a price to pay.
I want to dance in the olive groves while I'm still relatively young, even if its sleeping on a pallet and busking for tourists.
Anyway, I withdrew my uni application and continue to meditate on the wider possibilities that Lady destiny and Father Time may have in store.
I made it through Christmas again anyway. I also renewed an old friendship, got an offer of a free holiday and learned a little more about permaculture, digital dissidence and myself into the bargain.
Glad I had a 'quiet Christmas' really.
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