Xylophone

Here's the beginning of a blog post that didn't make it past draft stage.

***

Behind every fence was a dog.

We never knew their names, but we knew the pitches and volumes of the respective barks. And the timbre or whatever. We knew the speed of their response. We speculated that, if we could teleport, we could warp up and down the street, and play the dogs like a xylophone.

But none of us ever learned how to teleport. Not as far as I know, anyway. I don't keep in touch with most of them. I never see anything about teleportation on Facebook.

***

And that is why.

But I can't stand to throw anything away. I'm a hoarder of terrible ideas. I keep them all in a crepe paper safe of my own design.

***

Sometimes, I think: "I know a lot about soap".

But then, I'm like: "No, Paul. You've just seen Fight Club."

I like to put myself in my place.

***

I've been reading Anna Karenina lately, which makes up for my complete lack of intelligent thought.

I haven't written anything interesting for ages. Nor have I engaged with any serious topics of conversation. I haven't been paying attention to politics. My academic glands have shrivelled and dropped off. I can no longer count, write, solve problems, or make arguments. I've done nothing with my brain. My most strenuous mental exercise is retaining knowledge of World Cup scores for the entire gap between the final whistle and walking over to my wall chart.

Except for reading Anna Karenina. I've been doing that, so I'm still an intellectual.

I went to Oxford University. I'm supposed to be clever.

And a stranger might look at my life, strewn with comics and wrestling message boards and FIFA mini-games and think that I've regressed.

But I've been reading Anna Karenina. That's something a grown-up would do. No-one has been forcing me to read it, and I've been reading it.

I know almost all of the characters' names.

I don't need to worry about improving myself or taking an evening course. I don't need to find out what's happening in Iraq (I started reading an idiot's guide article to the conflict, but lost interest). I don't need to have informed conversations with knowledgeable peers.

Because I'm reading a Russian novel. Admittedly, it's fairly well-known. And it's a bit too much fun to be pure scholarship. But it makes me feel better.

It's a bit like when I waste an entire weekend, but then play my guitar for half an hour. It feels worthy. (Playing a stringed instrument is a higher pleasure than playing an electronic pinball machine simulator. I don't know why, but it is.)

Or like eating a huge pile of disgusting unhealthy food, and then having an apple. It makes it all OK.

Anna Karenina is just like that. It's halting my decline: like the jagged rocks on which my self-esteem parachute is caught. Sure, it won't hold indefinitely. But I'm still alive for now.

APPLES. PARACHUTES. GLANDS.

MIXED METAPHORS ARE FOR THE STRONG.

Good grief. It wasn't like this when I was in my twenties.

*reads old blog posts from when he was in his twenties*

*sees that it was exactly like this then*

*realises that the only major change has been the use of asterisks to indicate actions*

***

I'm surprised that so many people hang themselves. Not that the initial impulse is a strange one - we're all human - but because, once you've gone to the trouble of hanging a noose, you might as well turn it into a tyre-swing.

And then you have a tyre-swing, which is the only thing better than suicide.

Or a lantern.

Most methods of suicide remind you of something that makes life worth living.

Jumping off a cliff? Live for geology.

Shooting yourself? Live for marksmanship.

Head in oven? Cinnamon buns.

Overdose of pills? Pick 'n' mix.

Slit wrists? Godfather II.

That's why the human race has flourished. We are conditioned to see the positive in the face of despair.

We're all so sad and then happy that we'll live forever.