25th April 2000

I had another bath today; less you get the impression that I'm a dirty chap who doesn't perform the daily ritualistic cleaning actions, I shower day to day, but once in a blue moon (ie when on holiday) I take a proper one hour stretch out in a tub full of warm water and its glorious. Today as I soaked I read a book written by an owl. It's "The Lost Domain" for anyone who's interested.

Didn't do much else today, it was rained out the whole time. Just dashed out to the library to borrow a story book. Tomorrow it Will be sunny and I Will go to Borders and read and drink chai, and then I Will go to Covent garden and buy Serling her maglite, uh if He's willing of course. If it's grey and wet I'll just spend more time in the tub. Of course I resolve to start doing some Work tomorrow, oncology and the like.

Did some wondering today about corruption. Not corruption aka the FBI and the X files but corruption of the people and the world around us. Actually I've been wondering about it for a while now. It all started some months ago when I walked past an adult lingerie shop (aha! you think. tsk tsk) and they had a poster up, an advertisement of sorts, and it had an angel, or rather a girl posing as an angel on it, wearing nothing but a come-hither expression on her face and a little halo above her head. Which made me laugh at first but then made me wonder. Why? And I started looking around, and it's everywhere. Anything good, anything clean and innocent and something about us wants it debased. Anything that looks pure. Anything beautiful. I suppose pornography stars are all young and baby-faced, we'd like to see them get done in the most brutal of ways eh? Somewhere along the way, something went very wrong, or was it always like this? I have yet to see, and I'm grateful that I haven't, images of Christ debased. Just his angels. Perhaps there's hope yet, or maybe there's some residual reverence remaining amongst even the darkest of the non-believers?

I'm not against lingerie advertisements or anything of the sort, mind. I've even voiced once, to a friend's surprise that I'm not against prostitution. I see the role it has in the society we've built up and acknowledge it, although I wouldn't partake in it. But we aren't perfect, society as a whole sure as hell isn't perfect, and darkness will always exist. Better an outlet that leads to mutual gain than rape or violence, which so many people have confided in me and told me their stories, and made me realise it's not that rare a thing after all.

By the time we're twenty-five, make that twenty, we're all supposed to be cynical grown-ups who know everyone out there's in it for themselves, for their own dark pleasures and not to trust anyone, no matter how clean and innocent they look. The few girls out there I know who try to hold on to their ideals have their lives crushed by the Dark, walled in by ugliness, and they break. That's really what it's about, breaking the good. Perversity.

Well, I don't know about the rest of the world, but all I've ever wanted is something good, and clean, and pure. I'm not talking about people specifically, or women or anything like that, just a mindset and a life to lead. And I won't pretend that's how it's been but thankfully to date I've not betrayed myself more than once, in ways unredeemable. I'd like to live out a quiet life comfortably, somewhere by a beach, working in a clean hospital with relatively friendly staff. Somewhere warm with clear skies. Possibly with someone I loved. Tricky bit is finding that someone lol.

I met someone on IRC the other night who isn't obsessed with perversion and darkness and cool cynical know-it-allness, andI was surprised, because for once he wasn't a girl. Sure I meet people who are good and "clean" but they usually turn out to be girls holding on to their "naivity", and they're usually between 17 and 21, and somewhere after that it fades away because everyone's trying to break them, and to hold on further would be heartbreak beyond the limits of human endurance. I think one of my friends is slowly being broken now, she's 21 and I remember her crying and asking me "Why? Why me, it's so ugly all I want is a normal life", well not quite in those words, but something to that effect. Something to do with a guy betraying her. All I could do then was sit by her and make sympathetic noises, and hope to God that she wisened up and sorted her life out. Yet the other night the person I met was male, and 24. Food for thought. It's funny how as we wander this life, we bump into fellow travellers holding what we took for our personal, unique opinions on the world. I'm glad I met him, it's breathed a fresh breath of life into this cynic, and allowed him to keep trying to stay naive.

I met someone once who embodied that "goodness and cleaness"; I wonder how she's doing now. Somewhere across the sea still being the wonder she was, I think. Good and clean - those of her friends who know her might laugh to hear her described that way, because she certainly wasn't willowy and simpering and pleasing to everyone, rather independent and opiniated, and wittily intelligent. I've got a strange idea of "good and clean". I'm not talking saccharine and sugary and sweet, rather wholesome and comprehensible, multifaceted with sides I'll never know, but within, the foundations were stable, and good-natured. It's getting late and I'm babbling. Gnite out there.