Life and life only

That is a line from a song, right? God knows I should know. Things have been vertically eratic since that last solidly negative entry way back in April 10. Mother has not emerged from a hospital ward dedicated to the care of clinically depressed elderly folk; we remain keen to exit and find creative financial solutions to mitigate the relatively short distance til the final exit of this temporal existence; and our work situations are variable. However I have recently been offered a full time teaching post, so that was a boost. Providing I can square it with other work commitments, and the visa sitch can be worked out, I will have fixed full time work from the fall. However it means we will be living apart for the majority of the week, in separate emirates. This blog will therefore become tales from the staid academic side of life in the UAE rather than getting low down and dirty among the south asian working class. Still, there is hope in teaching - the students can be stimulating, and many are appreciative, and usually very polite. It makes a change from the diplomatic finesse of my previous employer. That international charity committed to relieving crises, staffed and advised by ex diplomats, that treated me with less respect than the timber yard that employed me as a cherubic looking grunt at the age of 16. I digress. In short, life is mercurial. This weekend has been a prick of a one, not helped by wife's understandably negative reaction to being dissed herself, in her case by local employers. Not sure where any of this will end, but we increasingly feel the departure back to the sceptic isle will be sooner rather than later.

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From 2 June 2008: a reposting and re-editing of "Impotent"

Impotent, empty rage against the self
Structureless, devoid of form
Drowning in the delusions that memory creates
Wanting meaning in a barren desert of existence
Wanting to come alive in a lifeless zone
Lusting, longing, lurking
From one stale old poster
To another cover shot of yesteryear
Wondering where the youthful zeal went
When the energies were mostly onanistically dissipated
Then as they are today

Work as means to paying rent is a common experience
Leisure that micturates away the surplus ain’t uncommon either
Middle aged middle class heineken drinker
Passionless except about the weakness of the self
And the fading desire for salvation through earthly love and musical liberation
Everything dead except as snap shot of something visceral
Penge boy cycling from record shop to record shop
Days upon days poring over records he would never hear
In search of the only truth that he still holds dear

The physical sublimation of the passion of the soul
Long since reserved for the sixth form poems he didn’t write
Because he left school at sixteen
Wanting to weep, though the tears won’t come
Empty impotent rage
Against God knows what