I recently completed writing a new novel. The title of the book is ‘Skin and Bones’ . More news on that soon, but in the meantime here is an update on a major work-in-progress.
It’s a book with the working title of ‘The Flying Boy’. The title refers to a recurring dream I used to have when I as a boy, probably no more than eight or nine years old, possibly younger.
The dream involved me flying along the street where I lived at rooftop height. I think it influenced me a lot, in fact I am influenced a lot by the recurring dreams of my childhood. There were a lot of them.
I already wrote a book based on the one about The Three Bears and much of my other thoughts about what the universe is, how time works, reincarnation, spirituality, morality and so on, originate in my childhood dreams.
There will be more info about The Flying Boy in future I’m sure and one day the book will be published. Don’t expect a ‘normal’ novel-like thing, but it is a novel. In the meantime, here’s an extract from the work-in-progress.
And this is because you find yourself unable to do anything else worthwhile. You can’t even find the energy to do anything passive like watch the television or flounder around on the internet. Yes, you know you can always do this, and it doesn’t matter if it’s useless or crap or meaningless or badly done because when you’re doing this you’re connecting to something that is not dependent on any of those negative qualities (or their positive equivalents).
The other reason you’re doing this is because you’re actually ready to go to bed but your phone needs charging and you don’t want to leave it on charge all night because that is a fire risk, especially since you can only find the turbo charger and that tends to make your phone quite hot. So while your phone is getting a little boost (10 or 15 minutes should do it) you’re writing this in the hope that it will be good enough to fit into your book, the novel you’re working on, on and off, called The Flying Boy, but if it’s not good enough or if it doesn’t fit or if it doesn’t work in that context then it’s ok, it doesn’t matter because as far as The Flying Boy is concerned, there are no rules, no criteria – yet, well – except that whatever is written for The Flying Boy must be written in the second person present tense and is written without immediate reference to what you’ve written before, because you don’t know what The Flying Boy is about yet except it’s got something to do with that recurring dream you had as kid where you are flying – (all that is explained elsewhere and you don’t want to repeat or bore yourself so that’s enough explanation for now).
Of course, you are hoping, even actively planning to find the story, the plot, the themes, the purpose of the book, but you’re not going to force all that to come out – no – because what is coherence anyway? It’s an attempt to make sense of existence, to find that meaning, that story.
And all the time in another layer of your consciousness you’re aware that you are an infinitely tiny component of this universe and that however long you wait you’re never going to understand or make sense of it all. You are already 67 years old, older than the vast majority of humans who have ever lived and will ever live, as far as you know now.
And you also know that there has to be some plot, some story, something to keep the pages turning. Yes, who knows what’s what? You don’t know, but you do know that this is something, yes, for all the negative qualities you’re assigning to this work you do know for certain that this is a crucial part of the story, it really is the core of this work. These words carry the truth and they do make sense, they are coherent, and just because you haven’t worked it out yet doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist or doesn’t have any value, because when you think about it, if it already did cohere, then there’d be no reason to read the rest of this book – and you most definitely want this book to be read by as many people as possible – everyone, because this is important, it’s relevant, it is the truth.
Nos Da – about a quarter past midnight
The next morning
You’ve got nothing to say, There’s still no one listening anyway so it doesn’t matter whether you’ve got anything to say or whether you say anything, but you need to say these things even if they’re nothing and there’s no one listening anyway. Why though? There is no reason.
Early afternoon, the same day
You are sighing again. You have just read an article online about why pessimism is a better way to look at life than optimism. This may be why you are sighing but probably not because you were more than sighing earlier. In fact you are in a very glum mood. This is not an unusual state of mind. In fact you’re so glum that you decide to bugger off – you’ll be back though maybe even today.
Late night same day
You are alone again. This has become your default situation. Most days and most late nights. This means you have a lot of time to think – and you do – think. You think about everything, every moment of your life, every person you’ve ever met, every place you’ve ever been, everything you’ve ever done. Well you think about as much as you can remember anyway and compared to the actual number of moments you have lived through then you think of very few moments because of course the moments you spend thinking about the other moments are moments too, and even though you think a lot, you don’t spend all your moments thinking about all the other moments at all. You do wonder though that when you think about a past moment you’re adding the moments you’re thinking about it, you’re adding to it, layering it, changing, so that eventually the moments you think about are far enough away from the real moments that they are imaginary moments.
You often find yourself thinking those kind of thoughts along with thoughts about quantum mechanics or time itself or the true nature of consciousness or infinite space and parallel universes.
But of course you also have to eat and keep clean and acquire the necessities of a physical life, like food of course, and shelter and a private space. Then you have to do something to earn money to pay for those necessities and then you need time to reflect, to create, to write, to paint, to relax, to sleep – and, to plan ahead.
So, all in all, even though you are alone a lot you have a very full and magical life.
You pause. Is this the place to stop? Yes, this is the end of this piece of writing at least. This sequence from the first word you wrote late last night is now a thing, and it is a complete thing in its own way as well as being part of your novel – The Flying Boy.
Onward then!