September 1984

He felt that he had tried them all. Maybe he was wrong but every now and again he would drop into a dead mood, listless, lifeless, bored and disinterested, like a small boy at a loose end. He would wander from room to room in his parent's large town house picking things up, generally books; there was a vast and transient population of books and other printed matter in their home. He would listlessly flick through the pages, unable even to summon enough energy or interest to read word by word. Descriptions and scene-setting bored him unless they were sufficiently adept as to evoke a tangible mood or an atmosphere of some strength. He would particularly be halted in his leisurely jaded progess through a book by any state of affairs through which languor and slow sensuousness like a dying river merging with the sea in a hot muddy delta. He was trapped on a sandbar. So what was this slow dying he seemed to endure every now and again. An uneasy answer hinted at the edges of his mind. Mid-twenties - he had achieved nothing. He was not distinctive, he needed to feel this; he felt tired, which he shouldn’t feel at this stage in his life. He was timid ,when he shouldn’t be and loud at the wrong times, silent, when he should speak, weak when strength and that alone was needed. He could see the huge ruts of his future life gaping out in front of him and sometimes his mind would scream in helpless terror at the sight like a soul fallen from Charon's boat. A phrase swam slowly to his mind's surface: “Screams of pain echoing through the haunted night". He remembered. It was from a poem that he wrote at the back of a lecture hall in University while a lecturer droned on at the front. He found the poem and reread it. What pompous, pretentious trash, he thought. Still the effect he had wanted to create was there - the mood of dulled pessimism, silent desperation, mournful sadness and slow decay. Oh to be gripped by something, some pursuit that would occupy remorselessly one's waking hours in a passionate welter of activity, mindless, absorbed and complete. Something that would absorb and fulfill for the rest of forever, drowning one's ambitions, hopes, childish dreams, fatuous and materialistic obsessions, unconsciously generating that longed for respect ,admiration and esteem of one’s fellow man, one's friends, acquaintances, family and all the members of one's community. But, no. He shies away from such an honest and simple solution like a nervous young colt. Salvation is within his grasp but his mind won't allow his arm stretch to its fullest ………….