Reflections at 3.30 on a saturday

My teeth have grown too large.

Every moment I spend back here in Devon is painful to me on an existential level. Sometime during my first or second term at university I split into two beings. One is flawed construct of mental energy on an abstract plane, bohdisatva-like and smiling beatifically in the white light of Oxford, where everything is clean, hale and too hand. The other is a creeping ape-like presence, slinking under an overpowering sky that looks down on hedges, ditches, forests, night-time animals stirring uneasily at the passing shadow.

My hair itches. My beard is not growing longer, but stubble is slowly darkening my face, like the face of a hanged man. My fingernails need cutting to stop them growing into yellow claws. My brazen eyes gaze deadly at a world they despise.

Food has lost it's savour. Even water doesn't satisfy.

It's the start of April, and it's getting warmer. The leaves haven't started appearing yet though. For a moment I experienced that little shiver: What if, this year, spring isn't going to come? What if it just keeps getting hotter while the rivers dry up, and the dead tree-trunks start to rot and fall? Maybe this is the fimbul-winter. For that matter, maybe I am the Fenrir-wolf.

I hadn't realised until this week what the most important quality I'm looking for in a career is: it has to get me away from home and independent as soon as possible after university ends. It has to be a triumph of the embodied mind over the ape-wolf.


THis could be the hardest dusk I've ever seen