Yes And Then Again No

I’ve been what they laughingly call “up against it” this week, and I have a problem with that phrase. Up against what? The tightly stretched, scented fabric of a fine woman’s bosom? No. The back end of a sleek yacht as it crosses from Lanzarote to the north African coast? No. All the wrongs and misdemeanours of humanity? Feels more like it.

I get weeks like this, when however much work I manage to put away, the problems just keep rolling on in, like the great big conveyor-belt of Karma knows how. When I used to believe in astrology, I would remind myself that I am a member one of the two most “karmic” signs, Pisces – the other being Virgo – to whom stuff is just supposed to happen. What did I do to deserve that? Nothing, that’s the beauty of karma. Karma means you were on the beach and you found the bottle with the map in it. Or else it means, you were on the beach when the tsunami struck. For this entire one sixth of the population, stuff just arrives to deal with. Fuck that for a game of foxtrot. I grew up in a house with two, maybe three (depending on which newspaper you read) male Pisceans and a Big Moma Virgoan. My family life was much like the tsunami, with us all regularly scrambling to get to the upper levels and onto the roof as the waters rose, lifting the TV and the dog basket with it.

This week has seen some great news and some shit news. I’ve had pithy comments and insights to impart all week, and not any more than two moments to actually make some sense or nonsense out of any of it, and that’s why I feel so damned out of sorts. I even fantasised about my therapist of several years back, just a glowingly sentimental memory of there once being someone to whom I could complain about anything. He’s had the common sense to relocate to India, sacred land of tea, far away from English nutters like me. I must remember to copy that enlightened behaviour.

My exasperation level is very high, I realise, for me to be thinking that I was much happier when I was un-messing myself up (messing myself down?) in therapy. Not that anything unmanageably difficult is happening – just the world doesn’t fit me right now. I sense big changes. I feel the winter coming.

I called the doctor and made an appointment, to have a general check up. Better make sure they haven’t missed some obvious and preventable evil, while they’ve been poking around with my thyroid gland and my voicebox.

I don’t go on about it in this blog, but sometimes I think Deek Deekster has stolen my life, and other times, I realise he has rescued it. Deek tells it as he sees it, whether it’s palatable or pathetic or pertinent or prattling. It’s bloody frustrating to have good lines and not be able to use them. My real-life alter ego has to tread a much more careful path and that’s why I sometimes wish Deek had never arrived. But, Deek’s cool, really, with his shouty face and the teeth and the stripy orange jumper. I peeled him off a Swiss train years ago. A real one-off original drawing, stuck to the shiny metal surface by some ace illustrator, whom I can never thank.

What if there was just one version of me, I got to thinking, somewhere, anywhere, instead of this scattered persona, served up just nice for people. Deek says, you do it because it’s fun and it works. But the other guy says, you’re a coward and a fraud. Not that I am. I just sometimes hear the voices decrying all ambition and believe them to be sane.

In Deek, have I created an avatar to live up to, or a demon who thinks he’s inviolate because he’s fiction? Yes, and then again, no. Actually, Deek is the less fictional character, I realise. He’s less paranoid than me and he knows what he’s doing. Who needs clinical schizophrenia when you have a nom-de-plume, and a blog?

Speaking of which, someone told me they saw a t-shirt which read, “No I’m Not Reading Your Stupid Blog” and he wanted to buy it; I am having a t-shirt made which reads, “Podcasting Is So Yesterday”.

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