Something bad has happened.
This belt buckle was a 21st birthday present from my grandmother. It was purchased from the Viking Shop in Stockholm, where I stayed with my family in a converted prison.
I’ve worn it pretty much every single day for 4.5 years. It was also the conversation starter by which I introduced myself to my girlfriend.
(I had dropped my trousers to enhance the comic effect of speaking with lips covered in numbing cream, whilst distracting from the fact I had just destroyed a cake by depositing my bottle of rum in the middle of it. The rum had fallen and smashed on the floor, taking the cake with it. It was fine though, because I mopped it all up. Then, in a moment of crushing existential crisis, I wrung out the mop and drank the rum-cake-mop water, in an attempt to convince myself that I was truly free.)
Anyway, today – as I was lifting a plastic wheelbarrow full of vintage and antique silver tablewear – the belt buckle snapped. Physically, of course, not emotionally.
Some have suggested that it can be repaired. Others have told me it is broken for good. Whichever is true, I find myself – for little or no reason at all – seeing this as symbolic.
The interpretation of symbols, however, is probably just an extension and manifestation of one’s own perception and values. Then again, although this renders it somewhat redundant as a form of gathering empirical evidence about the world, it possibly makes it a highly valuable technique for recognising and coming to terms with one’s own thoughts and feelings.
If I focus very hard, therefore, I will discover how I feel. Here goes…
I feel like I want a drink.
So it shall be. Alas, there is neither rum nor cake in this house, so it will have to be absinthe. And a Twirx (half Twix, half Twirl – Gay Bum marketing genius). Oh how I have grown up over these last 4.5 years.
Holy shit, I’m still writing in this box.