Everything has a beginning

How do you begin a blog? I'm not even sure if I'll ever tell anyone about this blog, so it probably doesn't matter how I start. Hmm. It looks like I've started anyway, so maybe I did know how to begin after all.

I plan to just write what's on my mind, and eventually I might develop some sort of theme and structure. But for now, it'll be ramblings, but hopefully reasonably interesting ones. And if not, you can always just stop reading.

If you're still with me...it's a sunny Sunday and I'm going to Claire's grave in Highgate in about an hour with her friend, Sara. I'm not really sure if it will have a positive or negative effect on my state of mind, but it feels right to go there, so I am. 

Claire died on 12th February 2009, almost 3 months ago. We were only together for 5 months, though we fitted together so well, it felt like we'd known each other for years and years. Claire would have relished a Sunday like this. She told me she rediscovered the joy of Lazy Sundays after we met. As a result, Sundays now feel to me less like melancholic precursors to Mondays, and more like a twenty-four hour pool of possibilities. 

I'm going to take a poem I recently found and read it at her grave. It's called "Song" by Allen Ginsberg and here's an extract:

The weight of the world

             is love

Under the burden

            of solitude

Under the burden

             of dissatisfaction

        The weight

the weight we carry 

         is love...

...No rest

               without love

no sleep

             without dreams

of love - 

           be mad or chill

obsessed with angels

              or machines,

the final wish

              is love

- cannot be bitter,

           cannot deny,

cannot withhold 

             if denied:

the weight is too heavy

                     - must give

for no return

            as thought

is given

            in solitude

in all the excellence

              of its excess.