There aren’t any benches in the garden of the church. They don’t wish to encourage people to linger. The path is an unobvious cut-through to a pavement-less side-street or else simply hugs the outer wall of the imposing structure and its annex.

I sit on the main thorough-fare as it begins to incline and where the sun has found its way through a gap in the trees and warmed the asphalt. I quickly devour a bread roll and then fumble in my pocket for the necessary scraps of paper containing the information I need to make a host of phone calls.

I have the same conversation with three different people, but the last one is accentuated by a skater making his way past, probably on his way to the college. I then make three very different calls – one happens to be a careless mistake, one leads to disappointment and one is unanswered. On the third call I leave a message. After this burst of activity I am left feeling unsated and have to come to terms with a new anxiety rather than a lack of one.

Although it’s midday and clear, it’s bitterly cold. It’s the first day of November. The brightness of the sun emboldens the stonework and pointing of the tower that’s much more modern than the tower itself. I take a moment to follow its outline against the cornflower sky. Externally, churches always make me feel proud and empowered. With the collective might of many, or the extraordinary dictation of one enslaving the will of others, can such vast and imposing creations be realised. Yet when inside a church I am overcome with humility; I become meek and gracious for the simplest opportunities.

My anxiety drives a compulsion to go in and pray but I resist. I feel like I’ve been praying a lot in recent years and I’m pretty sure that God isn’t a genie. Praying is not a discourse intended for wish fulfilment; it’s for consciousness, enlightenment and being. If praying has ever helped solve my anxieties in the past it is only because it’s a demonstration of the will and humility required to succeed. Realising this, I reassure myself that I am doing everything I can to determine my life and I submit to the future such endeavour unveils for me.

***

I appreciate that everybody has a different personality but I don’t think I could function without having ambition and a plan of action. Isn’t that what life is all about? If anyone believes I’m content and plodding through life then… you’ve been hoodwinked! Life to me is all about possibilities and we are tested in our lives to try and bring them to fruition. The tautology goes that the more ambitious you are then the harder it is to succeed. I’m not the type of person who focuses on outlandish targets for the sake of a challenge. I form my ambitions from a close scrutiny of the values I hold and I test and reconcile them with the world around me.

The act of doing can have unforeseen effects. Take a simplistic example: you have a burning ambition to ride a horse. You save up your money to go horse-riding. The expectation is that you will enjoy it! But quite often in life your expectations are off the mark. So how do you react to that? “Oh dear, I hated horse-riding, I’m not doing that again!” But why did you hate it? And what was it about horse riding that attracted you in the first place? Examine both ends of the barrel after an experience and you will learn more about yourself and develop new and more refined ambitions that are more likely to result in happiness and success.

People often talk about experience being important but then don’t go through the same methods of self-reflection. Their experience will just tell them not to go horse riding again. But the self-reflection could lead to something positive. “I wanted to go horse riding for the thrill and movement in a rural setting. I didn’t like it because I felt vulnerable. If I don’t trust horses but I want that same excitement then maybe I should try mountain-biking.”

***

I read La Dame aux Camélias this month and, although it was enjoyable on the surface, it was made quite unpalatable by the biographical notes that accompanied it. Ignorance would have been bliss! Well, maybe not bliss, the characterisation was poor – most of the characters spoke in either the same voice (what I assume to be that of the author… this flaw reminded me of Orwell’s Coming Up for Air) or were two-dimensional. Its winning element is its plot and I can wholly understand how that has been adapted into one of the greatest operas of all time.

Having the story supplemented with knowledge of the real life events that inspired it, however, left me feeling a little peeved. It makes the whole (fictitious) book look like a PR stunt, a sorry excuse and an arrogant rebuttal of criticisms of his behaviour. Dumas fils’ narrator takes pains to emphasise at the beginning and the end of the story that it is a TRUE. If this claim fell within the boundaries of an introduction, foreword or afterword then it would have been lambasted and heavily scrutinised. Making it part of the story suddenly gives its ‘truth’ an ethereal quality – it has none of its grounding but all of its effect. I couldn’t help but make parallels in my head with today’s phenomenon of fake news and scripted reality shows.

Reading Save Me the Waltz had a similar effect on my feelings towards Tender is the Night, but then neither were proclaimed to be a true story and their execution as fiction is masterful. In that case I felt like I was being shown a different perspective. With La Dame aux Camélias, the biographical background felt like the unveiling of a conceit.

I keep telling myself to take a break from reading to concentrate on writing as it has become evident I don’t have the time to do both; then I read three books in a month and make a start on Atlas Shrugged… perhaps a conceit to myself!

P.S. My favourite book this month is The Black Curve by Rut Hillarp. I greatly recommend it. It’s a lyrical exposition of erotic feminism and is highly original in its reductive but poetic style. It isn’t very long as it’s an excerpt from her novel Blodförmörkelse but this is, so far, the only English translation that exists of the great Swedish modernist’s oeuvre.

This month's favourites:
   Courtney Barnett & Kurt Vile, Lotta Sea Lice
   Rut Hillarp, The Black Curve
   The Iron Giant (1999)