there is a picture on the wall. well, actually there are three, but only one holds my particular attention. (i nearly wrote peculiar attention then. though recently that would be a better description. anyway, this picture; it is of, and i quote the title, the balconies on the grand canal, and it looks just like somewhere i could live. imagining the shutters on a morning and walking out into the sun to be greeted by the flowing majesty of the grand canal. i do. imagine it, i mean. i wonder what it would take for me to get there, who i would tell where i had gone and even about who i would need to see about acquiring such a property. and yes, you did read that right; i did say that i wonder who i would tell. i'm not even sure i would tell anyone. i don't like people to know my plans too well. or my whereabouts. they can know my ideas, but times and dates are out of the question. they are in fact as far as you can get from question; which would be the opposite i suppose. which, almost ironically, would be an answer. an answer that nobody would get, mind. all of this, however, is nothing but pointless speculation. this, like all my other dreams, will, in no small part thanks to the nature of luck or the absence of in such circumstances, pass into the realms of the unknown; disappear into the folds of time and slide gracelessly from attention as all fragments of hope have license to do in such a world. a world where temporariness reigns. or at least where the only hint of perpetuity belongs to the world itself and isn't dealt out to it's inhabitants except as a civilisation as a whole. and even then i have my doubts. so many dreams that haven't been realised. so may lives that haven't been lived. so many sentences left unfinished; and all ending with a 'but'. if only we had have finished them. why didn't we? the but implies a sense of anxiety and desperation. of trying to turn around a seemingly irretrievable situation. if indeed it was irretrievable then what harm would it have done. maybe it could have been saved. maybe he turning point was the 'but' itself. and now we will never know. now all we have are fading memories of bygone eras, slipping further from the grasp and, against probability, failing to be caught by any of the hands that helped build them. and so they fall. into an abyss of falseness. and an eternity of questions. and that is where you will find me. at least i had the foresight to take my favourite chair. i saw it coming, see. yes, i saw it and let it. because i didn't know what else to do. i was afraid of the 'but'. i let it escape. and to my regret i never tried to find it. i know i should have. i know now that i needed it. broken by words. and yet there are no words to fix it. that is confusing to me. i haven't been in this world long enough to understand that. or so i'm told. i have though. i know more than you think. i know the workings of this place, (i'm not one of the innocents. i just have help), but it still confuses me. maybe confusion isn't what i mean. it is harder than that. it is a kind of emotional violence that is beyond anger but not pain. i have heard the warnings of and against self-pity. i only deal in truth now. and the truth is that there is no one in this world who completely understands any other one person. that doesn't just apply to me, but to everyone. and i have had it proved. albeit with me as the guinea pig; which is why i mentioned self-pity since that is what this must sound like. honestly though, it isn't. and i shall explain why. self-pity implies caring. caring about yourself at least. now, i don't care about anything. i don't know what title to give it except honesty. and there is no one who can persuade me that not caring and being carefree are the same. they are not. and you would agree if you understood. i have a book here called the little zen companion. i don't know who got it for me. that is to say i don't know them, if you get my meaning. anyway, this is one of my favourite books because so much of it appears to be completely meaningless on first glance. one by one though, the entries all start to make sense. each one like a revelation. a mystery unravelling. and as each one shows itself to me i begin to understand. this is a book of answers. answers to the unanswerable questions of yesterday. this book, along with a handful of others, will, have and are shaping my vision. my perception. my self. for those that want to know me, i would ask you to read some of these other books. david copperfield would be a good start. i am everywhere. as we all are. there are bits of us in so many places; waiting to be found by the curious, be it ourselves or those wishing to know us. i am in writing, i am in music, (how walt whitman of me). not literally me you understand, but my thoughts; my way of thinking and even extracts of my life. episodes of me played out by an unfamiliar cast, to a less unfamiliar audience but bearing the hallmarks of my dreams. most of which are all too familiar. all of which only goes to show that these emotions which we believe to be so unique and assigned only to ourselves, are in fact shared by an incalculable number of people, of whom only the smallest fraction are able to understand or even communicate them with anything like coherency. i think i can, and there is the test for those who think they understand. if you do then everything you read on these pages should make perfect sense. nothing should raise a question of doubt or leave that lingering sense that it is a lie. if it does then you don't. and i was right all along.