Who is Peter Harrison?

My heart bled for another soul just the other day and my life revealed itself to be a burning dichotomy drowned by the mess of a thousand non-degradable plastic mouldings which had long lost their function and home, yet peppered throughout with straw and manure and such-like materials which might create micropockets of life where small insects might flourish and natural miracles occur.

Natural miracles occur?

Natural miracles we are.

We are all fleeting natural miracles, surrounded and permeated by such.

Of course they do exist, these miracles, but what could be so diametrically opposed to the natural miracle, the miracle of life, existence, experience, perception?

What is the true identity of Satan?

I don't know, but I do know that I received a phone call.

I received a phone call from a member of staff last night.

A phone call I will never forget.

A phone call which has changed my life, forever.

I didn't answer as I was out. The machine picked up a message.

Someone I never expected to call in my lifetime, called, and they said something I never expected to hear.

"Are you OK?" said the grainy voice on the aswering machine before a long pause.

"Yeah, why wouldn't I be," I thought.

"You're having a meltdown," they said, slowly.

"You've published your own personal phone number on the internet. Well, anyone that publishes their personal phone number on the web has some issues, you know, are you alright?" long pause.

It suddenly dawned on me that they had seen the link to an excerpt from my interview with Erbacce Poetry Journal who I am pissed off with at the moment because they published a book by Nick Power from The Coral and not me. (The issue is that the judging panel is meant to read blind, now I'm sorry Mr Power, and blind judging panel, but this can't be the case if one was to read our work anonymously page for page, line for line, word for word)

Indeed, it is a shame for a company like Erbacce to attempt to cash in on Kudos by exploiting semi-sub-culture celebrity.

Nonetheless, we reap what we sow.

We reap what we sow Erbacce.

"I don't know what it is, but you don't put your phone number on the internet, I know that.

"Are you having a meltdown?

"Anyway, I love you, I love you," the voice went on quietly, sobbing a little.

I wanted to say that I didn't just put my phone number on the internet, I published it in a magazine, oh, and yes, I wrote a poem around it and published that on the net, too.

"You're having a meltdown," the voice said, "but I'm madly in love with you.

"I didn't intend for this to happen, loving you. It wasn't my intent, you understand, don't you?"

I immediately began to wonder why someone would fall in love with me. It had to be my writing. Some lunatic had actually immersed themselves in my writing and become infatuated with the idea of the me that I had constructed therein.

I was Frankenstein's monster mark II.

I started to feel very sorry for the caller, piteous, ashamed for them.

*     *     *

"Where were you last night?" my wife asked.

I cast my mind back, but could remember little, maybe the first couple of hours or so.

"I met a guy, on the front at Parkgate, he was having trouble walking and so I got speaking to him. He said he had the meaning of life rolled up in a blanket in his airing cupboard at home - that he would show me if I looked after him."

I took him home and he did, indeed, show me something.

Once I saw, everything became connected.

I laughed hysterically and became hugely empathetic towards mankind in general, especially the needy.

Then I sobbed manically. Perhaps maniacally.

Soon after, everything balanced out and I came to terms with the experiences of the past.

But as I tried to recall in more detail the morning's events, I began to vaguely remember making the phone-call. That ragged, drunken, drugged-up phone call to myself - leaving the message because I wasn't there in my high-pitched posh-bitch Edinburgh accent.

The truth is, that soon after observing, nay experiencing, the meaning of life, I had become distracted by my ego.
My ego.
 "Herein lies my fatal flaw," I thought.
 "I have become the Narcissus of the phone age."
Behold, Narcissus the Chef.

I had called myself, worried about myself... simply concerned... and had tried weakly to instill some self-worth and confidence.

I wished it had been someone more interesting than me, you know, that had called me.

But my heart still bled for me - my lonely, confused, selfish soul.

And, as such, I am planning a sort of constructed online meltdown. You know, the sort of nervous breakdown manufactured by a writer in an attempt to gain more readers.

"What is the point to our existence Craig, what is the meaning of it all?" Jams asked in work this evening.

"I can't tell you Jams. You're not ready, it'll fuck you up."

"Then at least let me know, is there any future for us?"

"The future, just as the present and the past, is an abstract concept, and as for "us", well, there is no "us" without the exclusion of others or the unnecessary adding to ourselves, neither of which I have the inclination to accommodate in my mind and therefore say that there is no "us".
 Stay Zen mate, stay Tao, (click here to explore the Tao) unemotional, unattached.

"Ha! I'm only joking petal," I said, hands were flying everywhere during service - I squeezed Jams' bum, lovingly.

"Have you heard of Peter Harrison, or wait, was it Harris Peterson?" I went on, "He's a singer/songwriter/guitarist, top guy, exquisite taste in modern art, or wait, was he a songwriter/guitarist/singer, no that doesn't sound right, it's definitely Peter Harrison, singer/multi-instrumentalist/songwriter..."

Everything was fleeting, everything in transit. Danny Cheers could detect my graveness and gave me a little man-hug  which immediately reconnected me with humanity... 

The next post I make, I shut it all down, every fucking blog, every fucking website, to concentrate on my vitriolic attack of every fucko small publisher in the country who has refused to publish or ignored the quality and nature of my ground-breaking work.

As for cooking, well, you can fist that halfway up your colon as well if you want to.