ShutEye

Close your eyes for one minute. Just one minute.

What do you see?

A palm tree.  A desert island. Old school friend. His house, kitchen, mother smiling.

The beach. People walking. The newsagents, ice cream, double decker bus. The sun. Cars. 

A horse.

All from the past.

All unregulated and scattered randomly without pattern.

All yours.

Nowt for Owt

- What do you want to do?
* Everything.
- That's a lot of stuff.
* I know. That's why I do nothing.

He Lied

He felt tired. 

Tired of the words, the footsteps, the thoughts tormenting his soul. 

Tired of the act, the game, the relentless slide to nothingness. 

Drained by empty platitudes voiced in a monotone air. 

Worn down to the root by the self-enforced, unreciprocated lightness that compounds the bulk of this temporary contract we call presence.

But instead he just said “Great thanks, how about you”?

Today

Full and thrusting forward
Clamorous and mean.
Streets strewn with weighty footsteps
Faces rarely seen.
Meetings to attend to
Goods transported there
No place for the faint-hearted
No place for a rocking chair.
No time for honest greeting
Or how are you today?
Rendered through a benumbed body
More move out of my way.
Regarding all the mayhem
On a Monday afternoon
Sits one man on a blanket
His hat contains two 'loons'.
Name of Willie Johnson
Born in Thunder Bay
A stranger in this city
Who's name you know.
Today.

Next Door

I met my next door neighbor

For the first time yesterday

I waved a cheery greeting

As I went upon my way.

Til then the only inkling

That someone lived upstairs

Were footsteps in the morning

And the noise of moving chairs.

I wondered what he looked like

Was he tall or short or thin?

Conundrum solved one morning

As he rolled his wheelie bin.

It’s nice to know your neighbours

Creating a new friend

It’s nice to know your neighbours

That’s what matters in the end.

Imagine my embarrassment

As I rose my hand up high

The wave not once acknowledged

Be neither seeing eye.

His dog strained his tight collar

With inconsiderable ease

But I’d wager one new dollar

Guide dogs aren’t Pekingese.

Oh Charlie

Charlie enjoyed life as a fly. Compared to being a wasp or a bee, it was pretty great.  However his existence was called into question three seconds before his untimely death,

If your thoughts of who and what you are all live in the past (Charlie mused) and the past isn’t ‘here’ – then what are your thoughts for? Why does your mind automatically revert to the past? Where are the pictures held and how do they come to the fore? Wouldn’t it be better to think of nothing rather than something random like a horse or a tree? Can you do that – think of nothing at all? Is that death, or do we become thought when we die?

Bad time to question these things, Charlie thought.

If we are thinking past thoughts and the past doesn’t exist are we, in fact, thinking about nothing - something that doesn’t exist, i.e. nothing? And if the past is nothing, why does it continue to have a hold over us? Is it because we look to the future which also doesn’t exist? Spending our time thinking about how something that doesn’t exist influences something else that doesn’t exist seemed like an awful waste of time to Charlie. The only thing that does exist is this very moment even though that’s now in the past and so, doesn’t exist.

Charlie wished he’d thought of this before. Before he slammed into the windscreen of a Ford Focus 1.6 travelling on the M1 north of Dundalk.

Still...he tried to make the most of the moment. Before it was gone.

That's a Worry

How do you know if you are suffering from depression or anxiety?

First, do you feel depressed?

If the answer to this is ‘Yes’, then there’s a good chance you are.

However, if you are worried that this might be the case then it is quite possibly anxiety.

If your anxiety surrounding this is causing you to lose interest in daily life, that more than likely is depression.  That can be a worry.

If so, well then I’m afraid it sounds like anxiety.

Being anxious about depression can lead to depression and/or indeed bouts of anxiety. But we’ll leave that for another day.

Basically, if you experience feelings of anxiety or depression, you more than likely are. 

Depressed or anxious.

But I wouldn't worry about it.