The Weasel

2011-11-24T02:55:00.000-08:00

Forward

To begin, the groundwork, a quiet scene:
James, seated stealthily in book-like clothes
and rumpled concentration, reading the
breadth of the shelf for his degree, his hand
splayed over a book as though to stop it
wriggling free of his grasp; or we can look
over at the classics wing where a mob
of Aristotelians earnestly
line the mezzanine - and nasal guesswork
might trace a damp sandal scent that mars the
pleasant paper-mould mood in the alcoves.

But these books are only assailable
for the seasons of study, beyond which
your turnstile-triggering library card dies.
From then on it’s all business, from results
day to the graduation photographs:
Jonothan, David, and Sarah scatter
like dice thrown onto a map - careering
the hopeful ascent into internships,
interviews, networking, and jobs websites,
then the bar work they promise to give up
every week, the tenuous nepotism,
the spin so self-ennobling no honest
CV could house it; Despite hindrances –
like the recession - the immutable
advance trudges steadily on into
daily office captivity, coffee
breath that might be congenital, double
chins obscuring the top buttons of shirts,
the lunch time pints, the tumescent beer guts
seen sagging over belt buckles, then the
plush restaurants followed by the theatre,
or pretending to enjoy the opera;
greying, guffawing fatsos with laphroaig
filled tumblers surrounding tables, grunting
dull-eyed self-congratulation. Now the
unfettered grimace parties, disgruntled
human swellings with burgundy eczema’d
skin swilling infinite gin at hollow-smile
get-togethers…

But, focusing, these years
of faultless ironed shirts and thinning hair
shudder and divide to reveal two pub
bound suits - Harry, who they once called Hazza,
and Jeff, who noisily dredges up his
snot into his throat every few minutes -
as they loudly discuss the ample bum
and bust of their receptionist, neither
listening to the other - nor, really,
to themselves (undermining the function
of a conversation) - as a prelude
and practice for inebriation hour.
At a bleating from his pocket, Jeff stalls
to hock up sputum before answering.
Harry walks on thoughtlessly but, nearing
the chosen pub, has a thought nonetheless:
delving into his breast pocket he takes
out a small cylindrical pill vial and
automatically shakes it at his palm
unwittingly spilling a stray pellet
of fluoxetine onto the pavement.

Leaving him behind an instant later,
this pill will depart the spot plucked up snug
in the tread of a passing walker’s boot,
lodged in the aperture of the e in
berghaus, joining some gravel stowaways.
Before long the boots will be dipped in an
acrid puddle of splashed vinegar as
the wearer pauses at the threshold of
a chippy to consider the prices.
Reacting oddly with the vinegar,
the pill will begin to dissolve, losing
its shape, and disengage its rubber clamp
to froth and burgeon into a spectral,
lazily animated grey foam, like
a carbuncle on the concrete, causing
a very stoned metalworker to squint
down from his balcony through the dim street
lamplight, heart quickening, as he begins
to fear the proliferation and coup
of this giant-amoeba alien race,
one of whom would appear to be pulsing
insidiously right down there right now
oh god that cant be real its not real oh
god what is it it will take over and
melt us all in our beds it must be stopped.

But you can leave him there in a panic,
since he’s imaginary, while I stay,
as a fleshless voiceless voice on paper,
here between the page and itself, wrapped up
in its clean envelope of fictive thought,
lingering indefinitely to re-
read and consider how the initial
library hush could stray so far from itself,
dissolving the plot along with the pill…

So while I’m mired without past or future,
you have no choice but to move on ahead,
keeping with the forward motion of things,
where candles flicker (it’s compulsory,
even in still air) and the clock chisels
away - tck - at the hours you have left.

2011-05-02T10:00:00.000-07:00

The aimless walk has served me well in recent years. I’m not talking about a single aimless walk but of aimless walking as a regular practice. It serves so many wonderful purposes and the more I do it, the more purposes and wonderfulnessess I find. I have practiced it solely within the very urban surroundings of London as the public transport network affords the aimless walker an almost certain protection against getting truly lost. There is always a bus or tube or trains station to take you back at least towards your home, always someone to ask for directions.

As a social activity it provides a wonderful atmosphere in which to chat, gossip or get stuck into some intellectual discourse. The landscape is ever moving and so the conversation, if it threatens to dry up, has ever new fuel provided by new architecture, new people, new plants, animals, adverts, art, and things you didn’t expect to see at all: things I can’t anticipate here. Even the most boring parts of town can harbour endless oddities, hidden secrets, or even charming blanknesses.

As Pissarro said ‘Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing.’ And it doesn’t take any special initiation to become one of these blessed folk. I feel it might be something like being a believer in a religion. Though I have no clerics, no holy text, and no church, still I feel like I’ve come to know a godlike personality. The personality happens to be place itself.

Any given place is an endlessly deep swarm of artifacts and curios, a palimpsest of whatever stories have occurred in and of the location. Not just human events and structures but those of nature, animals, plants, and the deadest of the dead: stones. Blank, empty spaces can hold even more intrigue then those that teem with convolution. Beheld in stark contrast to the usual business, a barren zone or landmark-less landscape is so alien it can elicit purer, simpler, deeper emotional or intellectual responses. And anyway, the emptiest place on earth is no longer empty when you, the observer, arrives to be in it, to experience it.

God in the Quad - by Ronald Knox

There was a young man who said, "God

Must think it exceedingly odd

If he finds that this tree

Continues to be

When there's no one about in the Quad."

Dear Sir:

Your astonishment's odd:

I am always about in the Quad.

And that's why the tree

Will continue to be,

Since observed by

Yours faithfully,

GOD.

No place is without a genius loci (spirit of place). And you don’t need tools or jargon or specialised knowledge to decipher the spirit. Discovering anything at all (scientific and mathematic truths included) lies dormant in the observer more than in the outside world. We map our thoughts and expectations onto what we see. All is in the eye of the beholder. If some mysterious marks on a wall catch your attention and make you smile, make you think of something, make you stop and wonder, it’s not necessary to discover their true origin, their actual author. Though it may become your aim, art (or we might call it intrigue) can be found regardless of considerations of author, history, or understanding. We can look at the sky when it turns an unusual colour and say “I haven’t a clue how it’s gone that colour or what’s causing it but I find it beautiful.”

So the aimless wander needs only to be open to the possible intrigue of possibly anything. Having mentioned religion already here is another similarity: I find myself preaching openness. Urging that you be open to the ever-present possibility of appreciating the world around you. As I preach this openness I squirm inwardly with sensation that I am repeating something similar to what I’ve heard so often from preaching theists. “You just have to be open to God”. Nodding and smiling as I have done at this entreaty, I have always resolutely decided I would not be open to God since it didn’t mean anything at all. Standing in the atheist’s paradigm, as I do, the notion of becoming open to this almighty ghost strikes me as intellectually impossible and no more than a weird sadomasochistic mind-ritual in which I subscribe to a fallacy so forcefully as to begin to hallucinate His actuality.

I’m well aware that my religion of the aimless wanderers who worship the variety of existence due to the endless intrigues of their own minds stands, in a sense, on the same ground as conventional religion when looked at by the as-yet-uninitiated awanderer (atheist is to theist what awanderer is to wanderer). So although I feel no less devout about the wandering cause I can understand if those standing in a conflicting paradigm see nothing but nonsense in my position.

2011-04-29T09:34:00.000-07:00

A Snippet of 2009.

I read on the train. I very rarely read anywhere else. If I do it is probably on a bus - so most of my reading happens in a moving environment.

But most of it, almost all of it, happens on the Metropolitan Line between Baker Street and Uxbridge. I have become used to the rocking and shaking of my seat, of the whole carriage, as I read. It is a comfort like being in a pram, a cot, or a mother’s arms. Rocked back and forth in the mother’s arms, the first dance of life, the baby’s first taste of rhythm. My deity mother shakes the train as I slumber fitfully in my bookdreams.

Yes, reading is a kind of sleep. Reading is receding from the world, forgetting the body and ones surroundings. Yielding to the dream of the text. In my comforting commute, as my zooming pram shakes away my woes, I read and read. Woken only by the terminated train, whose unprecedented stillness, and whose long loud hiss, speak of a tired and reposeful deity who wishes for some rest herself. No more rockabybaby, time to get up. And so the day starts as the book ends. Like any child I mourn this departure from comfort.

2011-02-27T05:42:00.000-08:00

Chime

This junction of a cycle path and a footpath saw a lot of traffic,

both feet and wheels, and a lot of bell-ringing near-collisions.

Now, the flock of birds that made their home in the giant tree

towering over this intersection became so used to the chime

of the bicycle bells that it became part of their language.

They spoke it fluently, like natives, even reproducing that

dissonant metallic reverb that truncates the traditional trill.

None could tell it apart from the real thing. And so, in the quieter

moments of earliest morning or perhaps of dusk you might see

a pedestrian twirl around in fright, head swivelling frantically,

sure that at least five angry cyclists were approaching so fast

as to be nearly already on top of him. But in fact there were

no cyclists and the ear-jostled victim would walk on flummoxed.

What is this? Mischief? Such was the ventriloquism of those

birds that no human ever solved the mystery, not one ever even

looked upwards. I knew, of course, but then I’m one of those birds.

2010-09-19T08:47:00.000-07:00

Polonious: What do you read my lord?

Hamlet: Words, words, words.

Here are some words about words:

loganamnosis

noun. - An obsession with trying to recall a forgotten word.

logastellus

noun. - "A person whose enthusiasm for words outstrips his knowledge of them" - John McClellan.

logocentrism

noun. 1 - Literary analysis that focuses on words and language to the exclusion of non-linguistic matters such as the author's individuality or historical context.

2 - Excessive attention paid to the meanings of words or distinctions in their usage hence, logocentric.

logopoeia

noun. [1929 Ezra Pound in New York Herald-Tribune 20 Jan. XI. 5/4] - ‘The dance of the intellect among words’, that is to say, it employs words not only for their direct meaning, but it takes count in a special way of habits of usage, of the context we expect to find with the word... It holds the æsthetic content which is peculiarly the domain of verbal manifestation and can not possibly be contained in plastic or in music.

logocracy

noun. - A community or system of government in which words are the ruling powers.

logodaedalus (or logodaedalist)

noun. - One who is cunning in words.

logodaedaly

noun. - Arbitrary, cunning or capricious coinage of words; skill in adorning a speech; ‘verbal legerdemain’.

logolatry

noun. - ‘Worship’ of words; unreasonable regard for words or for verbal truth

logology (or logonomy)

noun. - The science of words.

logogogue

noun. - A person who lays down rules about words; a language dictator.

logolepsy

noun. - An obsession with words.

logolept

noun. - A word maniac; verbivore, logophile.

logomachist

noun. - One given to disputes over or about words (also logomach).

logomachy

noun. A dispute over or about words; controversy marked by verbiage.

logomisia

noun. - Disgust for certain words.

logopandocie

noun. - Readiness to admit words of all kinds.

logophile

noun. - A word lover or word buff

logorrhea

noun. - Excessive and often incoherent talkativeness or wordiness.

logorrheic

adjective. - Characterized by excessive use of words.

2010-08-20T14:10:00.000-07:00

Underlined In Red

Even my heart beats mistakes,
Though one might be fooled by its fakes.
Its hazardous drum couldn’t beat true
By accident. Barely a drum, more a few

Crumbled quiet knockings in my torso
Like drips, bits, blobs, or like crumbs.

A thrum rung crumb, empty lung and still-tongue sung
A brittle crumbeat.
So small it mocks its own large hunger.

But I live through its accents,
All of them wrong.
Shrug in the mire of nonsense
Glum dragged along.

And sing this drugged song

My résumé is fillable with two syllables:
Just one word, wholeness averred:
An iamb that I am:
A noun I take to town:

Mistake.

2010-08-13T04:30:00.000-07:00

My Walk To Work

On my walk to work I walk fast. I take big strides and breathe deeply. It is exhilarating. The more I walk, the more I like walking. Walking and thinking.

I am developing a taste for certain types of walking, a distaste for certain others. I love walking uphill – it stretches my calf muscles and gives me a sense of upward progress; greater, higher things await - a prize at the top of the mountain. I dislike walking downhill. My socks rub against my heels and my toes knock against the inside of my trainers. I don’t think I was designed to walk downhill. If hell has a chain gang then they must be constantly walking downhill in shoes that are slightly too large. If heaven has an urban ramblers association they will walk uphill forever. But, of course, I don’t want to walk uphill forever. The urban fluctuations are part of the joy.

I walk with avid determination, overtaking nearly everyone else I encounter. When I notice that someone is walking as fast or faster than me I am immediately charged with a competitive spirit. I must overtake everyone. On the edge of my conscious thought dances the notion that if anyone is walking faster than me then I am being left behind - not merely left behind literally, as I actually am in these cases, but left behind more meaningfully, in life. This is, of course, ridiculous. I am far too competitive. Too often I find myself competing with people who have not the faintest clue that they are involved. One day I will learn to relax. One day.

When I grow up I would like to be able to relax. But for now I must squeeze the day like a sponge. I must vibrate like an atom. I must not waste a second. Every wasted moment stabs into me like a razor sharp hand, or like the chiseled hand of a muted clock - silently ticking; ominously, inexorably eating time, crunching silently, silently – silent except for the ticking, the ticking which I can hear. Tick tick tick...

But I spend an hour walking to work and an hour walking home from work. Two hours of walking every week day? Yes, two hours every day. Are these two hours not wasted? No no; most certainly not. When I walk I am thinking. This is the closest I get to relaxation. The steady rhythm of my deep breathing acts as an antidote to the mas-tick-ating clock, I no longer hear it munching away at time. My steps beat out a glaring defiance that drowns it out – I am walking faster than it can eat, I am moving ahead of time. My legs pulsate happily below me, like my own little animals, working away at the music of motion. So I think, my mind wanders -- wanders and wonders. My eyes rove and watch the passing streets.

Although my walk to work follows the same path every day, things do not stagnate. The fabric of the city is constantly ruffling. I leave my house at 7:30am. This is earlier than most people so the streets are rather empty. Especially the ones I walk through as I begin my journey. John Ruskin Street, Dale Road, Cooks Road, Ravensden Street... they are quiet, residential areas. In particular I enjoy watching the street sweepers.

In autumn I usually see more than one street sweeper. As I approach I notice the leafless prelude to their efforts, the parts they have already swept. And passing directly by them I pay close attention to their skillful use of the large broom. I can’t help but inject a certain heroism into this activity, this art! Sweeping our streets, these men are artisans in a unique way. Watch them. Look you! They are not drones (though by their faces, I fear some think they are), they are not soulless – they possess a honed technique. It is not as easy as it looks – and I love how it looks. There is a real beauty in their sweeping.

Perhaps I’m mad to think so; I know these are not the happiest of men. Not at all. But they are admirable and they are doing something real, something so very real. Perhaps I am too keen on tidiness – and I am very keen on tidiness – or perhaps I give my thoughts too rosy a tint. Yes. Perhaps.

So my walking usually calms the tempest of time, smothers my fear of wastage, and I stride wholesomely on. But sometimes walking is not enough. Sometimes I need to make sure that I feel I am still progressing, learning, building... So to avoid any of that painful time wastage I practice my human beatbox. I make drum beats with my mouth. Secretly, I tell myself, this is part of my project to become a Homo Universalis, a man of broad and varied skills and learnings, a polymath. Or, at the very least, someone who has learnt things, someone who has thought things, someone with interests, passions and skills. Someone full of surprises. Is this a lot to ask? Probably. But I ask this of myself. I can't help it.

Along I walk, beatboxing in time while humming underneath, gasping for breath after four bars, grunting and heaving, burbling, mumbling, almost gurgling sometimes... I beatbox my way through the streets. When I first became enamoured with the human beat, the mouth-drum, I would only practice at home - in the safety and solitude of my room or that of the bathroom (which has good harmonics). But gradually my confidence has grown. It started in Southampton, where I was at university, in the quieter streets there, at times, when I realised no one was near, I would indulge heavily. "Ba boom boom bap, t-ch t-ch boom bap!" Sometimes, when I became carried away, I would suddenly notice someone nearby, perhaps they had just got out of a car or come out of a house, in an instant I would fall silent. But soon I realised that nothing would come of it if I continued, if I held the beat and walked on, not caring whether others could hear. That is not to say that I now beatbox fearlessly in public. There are certain people who can still cause me to fall silent: those who might understand what I'm doing. Young men, for example, especially those dressed in hip-hop regalia, are most likely to know what I am up to with my strange noises. I do not want an understanding ear listening in. My walking beat is a music of solitude. If it must be heard by others I want it to appear nonsensical, mad, foolish, odd... because no one approaches (or for that matter reproaches) a mad man.

Along the three miles of pavement I see many of the same faces every morning. And more often than not I see them at the same point in my journey. I pass a man and his daughter leaving their house to cycle off down the road together, both heavily clad in reflective gear and flashing lights. The father always cycles between his daughter and the traffic at an angle behind her. They roll along peacefully and their punctuality always pleases me - they leave their house at 7:35.

The same fat woman waits for the southbound P5 bus on Dale Road every morning as I pass at about 7:40. She stands reading a book, solitary and absorbed. She is always alone and always reading. I sometimes try to work out what she is reading but can never manage to spy the spine. She holds her books wide open with the spine facing flat to the floor. You'd have to crouch in front of her to see the cover. One of these days I'll crouch down and tie my shoe laces or stoop to pick something up and steal a glance. It struck me recently that, after months of vague scheming and planning how to discover the book I had never thought of just asking her. But this kind of interaction makes me uncomfortable. I imagine she would feel uncomfortable, if not because it is none of my business, then because she might think I was after something else. After all, one doesn't expect people in the street to take an interest in your chosen reading. And I am just a person in the street, as far as she is concerned. I doubt she even knows my face, though I know hers, as she is always engrossed in a book.

As I walk down Ravensden Street, two cyclists unlock their bikes from the railings in front of their houses. The first one is a young woman, and then further down the street, a young man. They both wear helmets and full-body cycle suits of Lycra. Though they are neighbours about 10 houses apart they never speak to each other, they never look at each other. But, walking through like an unacknowledged ghost at 7:45, I look at them and smile. I enjoy their synchronicity with each other and with me.

My walk takes me past two comprehensive state schools (one of which I went to myself). Bopping in droves, I see duplicates of the characters I used to know at school. In particular I notice the boys who would have terrified me as a boy. I used to call them rudeboys. I still do. They haven't changed. But I, thank goodness, have. They no longer terrify me because they no longer see me. I do not exist to them. I am now a man with a beard, an adult, at least by appearance. They see straight through me. This is at once very odd and very liberating. When I was at school I wished so dearly that they would look straight through me and now that they do I can't quite believe it. There are moments when they erupt into boisterousness right next to me on the pavement, hitting each other, swearing, laughing brutally - sometimes I flinch, forgetting myself for a moment, preparing to run away as I would have done 10 years ago. Then I suddenly remember that I am invisible.

At 7:55 I reach Mi6, the fiercely guarded British Secret Intelligence building. Gazing up at the numerous security cameras lining the walls I sometimes catch sight of one that is moving about like a chameleon's eye, scanning inquisitively yet attached to a large and eerily stationary body. About once a week I notice a police officer on the pavement outside, methodically checking all items of street furniture surrounding the building from the bus stop to lamp posts and traffic lights. He wears a big bullet proof vest and squints at every paving slab with dutiful paranoia.

At 8 o'clock I am half way to work walking over the river on Vauxhall Bridge. Sometimes, when a thick morning mist drapes itself over the city, the bridge disappears into a spectral nothingness. The opposite side of the river is barely visible and the bridge looks as if it might continue indefinitely, stretching over a quiet ocean. Reaching the middle of the bridge is thrilling in the mist: neither side of the river are quite visible and the growling grey metropolis momentarily evaporates to leave me walking through a cloud.

Pimlico's opulent white houses surround me for the next episode of my walk and for the most part, I walk alone. The ludicrously rich inhabitants of this area are to be seen scurrying from their front doors into their luxury cars with their ridiculously uniformed children. I don't understand why Chelsea's private primary schools insist on clothing their students in almost theatrically dated outfits. Three year olds in breeches and berets, or tiny suits with cuff links. I'm probably exaggerating. But not much.

On Pimlico Road at 8:20 I pass the same beautiful woman every morning. She walks determined and fast, looking down, with a slightly pained expression on her face. I always hope she'll look up at me, at which point I plan to smile and thereafter... well, of course, we'll get married. I haven't figured out how my smile leads to marriage... fill in the blanks yourself and let me dream. She's so beautiful. But, as far as I know, she has never set eyes on me. My unrequited encounter with her signals the beginning of the Pimlico Road interior design district.

Shop after shop exhibiting cabinets, tables, chairs, and endless household items of absolutely no function whatsoever adorn carefully arranged window displays. None of these shops are open at such an early hour. But, positioned in the centre of this district of finery, lies Daylesford Organic, a cafe of sorts (though I'm sure "cafe" would strike both the staff and the clientele as far too vulgar a word to be appropriate here). Pampered dogs sit patiently beside botoxed woman of indistinguishable age, and impeccable make-up. Ineffably clean business men sit sipping coffee and reading the newspaper over an eccentric looking pastry.

Sloane Square hits with a sudden bustle and my quiet walk is over, my beatbox must stop. My legs are gratefully worn out, they surge with a glad fatigue as I slow down to weave through the crowds. The throngs push towards the tube station and I salmon against them, eventually slipping into the back door of my workplace. I am damp with sweat.

The oil company is rich and the offices are accordingly plush. The toilets and showers are what you would expect from a 5 star hotel. I've never been to a hotel but I know what I would expect from a 5 star one. The shower room is large enough to swing a cat in - a tiger. Blindingly clean white towels are provided. They are piled up on the bench neatly folded. There is a sink and a toilet beside the shower cubicle. Everything that could possible sparkle does sparkle and the walls are panelled with what looks and feels like marble. It probably is marble. I never get used to the sight of myself in the mirror peeling off my damp old t-shirt and removing my worn trainers in this majestic environment. I don't feel I belong there. This shower looks as though it were designed to wash people who are already immaculately clean.

2010-07-20T15:36:00.000-07:00

Divine Contradiction

Not as divine as we all thought, one afternoon God fell to drinking. He had been a rigid abstainer for the past eternity but something, He felt, had changed. Something about the universe seemed different. There was something down on earth that they called postmodernism. It didn't so much feel like an affront on religion as many past movement had been. No, God had been reading some of these confusing postmodern texts. God felt as though His creation had produced something alien. He wondered, indeed, if these philosophers were not the spawn of some other deity. But of course not, He told Himself, I'm omniscient aren't I? I would know about that. Nonetheless, postmodernism was unnerving. These philosophers were not worshiping false Gods, they were affirming the omniprescence of contradiction, they were denying the possibility of truth... the enlightenment was falling apart but the secular were not returning to pious worship of mysterious symbols. Not quite. Those that did a lot of thinking, these philosophers, were discovering chaos, confusion, and uncertainty where before everyone had been certain that truth was hiding somewhere, the scientists would find it. No longer. It wasn't that science had died, far from it. It was philosophy that was dead or dying. Philosophy as the practice of seeking truths, arriving at truths, was being left behind, discredited. Philosophy was about ... what was it about? That was moot. But one thing was certain, and that, unfortunatly, was uncertainty.

So God, having noticed this with increasing alarm, decided that something must be done. But rather than conduct a miracle, God thought He might join in. He wasn't so sure He knew everything after all. For example, what would happen if He had some alcohol? He didn't know. There was no one to ask, no one knew more than Him about the universe but there were no clues as to what might transpire if a God became drunk. Moreover, was it a sin if He had a drink? He'd never considered such a thing posssible. The logic was becoming rather foggy here and He was beginning to sympathise more and more with this postmodernism malarkey. Contradictions were cropping up everywhere, why had He not noticed before? For example, His ignorance of the effects of alcohol on His transcendent body, despite His being omniscient, that was a contradiction wasn't it? An ignorant omniscient? He wasn't even sure.

So it didn't seem completely insane to try a drop of alcohol now, to partake in a bit of this confusion and perhaps maybe even understand it a little, if that made sense. Chosing at random He poured Himself a glass of sherry. It seemed to emanate a certain majesty that was fitting considering His presidency of the universe. Without much trepidation He raised the glass to His lips and took a sip. Its sharp bitterness was an unfriendly element in His mouth and He frowned thoughtfully. As the initial tang wore off and the drug hit home God leant back in His chair. There was something cathartic about this unpleasant liquid. Despite the taste He could see the appeal. Engaging so tangibly in a contradiction, as He felt He was, His thoughts turned again to the philosophers. The possible enormity of what He was doing did not seem to worry Him. Perhaps this was a new era. The paradox was no longer a freak accident, a bearded lady or two headed featus. No. The paradox had become a fashionable object. A kind of monacle through which to squint at existence. And who was to tell God that He couldn't have a go with this monacle?

Taking another sip of sherry, God looked down on the world from heaven and suddenly felt old. This alcoholic excursion... was it foolish? Was He like the middle aged parent who learns some slang to impress the children? This possibility depressed Him and, somewhat carelessly, He drained the glass. As it burned down His throat He inhaled sharply and found Himself murmuring "No one else will know anyway. I'll just have a few drinks and stay out of the way for the evening. What harm can it really do?" A questioning look appeared on His ancient face and He seemed to be asking himself something. "Why have I started thinking aloud?" He continued, "I suppose it must be something to do with this sherry. I better have some more... to be.... to be sure."

2010-06-24T15:54:00.000-07:00

Ship

But this is a mess. I need some structure. We need structure.

Help me dredge up the structure of this old boat from the bottom of the ocean. This algaed carcass of a ship, for years a playground for the fish, will structure my story. Help me drag it from the depths and as we heave, I’ll tell you some things. Listen.

I wish I could speak but dyspepsia holds my tongue. I feel such a weight of tales, such a full stomach of words that I might vomit you a whole book, a library of ink.

Be patient. I will get there.

This boat – and we are heaving it, yes we are – is drippingly emerging from the clouded waters. Heave ho. And your muscles are strong. You are a good heaver. You tug like a veteran ship salvager. But keep your focus and I shall sing.

My song will keep our sinews well oiled. Oh look at the proud old ship! Even its drying drips are wondrous. Look how it retains its glory even after so many years entombed in that liquid Hades. But I was going to sing. I will sing.

Heave hoe, the reaper mows
And as he goes with timely blows
The wheaty ears are blasted.

Heave hoe, the gentle mice
Like scuttling lice, or rolling dice
Flee full-tummed unfasted.

Heave hoe, those earthy greens
Do still beteem, by nature’s wean
Ne’er letting death hold sway

Heave hoe, on nature’s road
Some will be toads, some sing fair odes
And some will do what may

As this old wooden beast gains its renaissance into air we smell its salty promise... while my promises of tales to charm your ears remain yet unfruited. I must needs stop stopping and get on with starting to start. So stand back.

No, not so far back as you can’t hear me over the roar of the creaking vessel (as it inches glacier-like). Thats right, legs firm and keep up your tugging, for I can feel the start of a tale coming on. And what a tale I have to tell.

Oh but look how the gulls - how they hover and swoop, plunging their beaks into the marine foliage, replete as it is with the bugs and mites of the deep. From this uprooted civilisation they pluck in their beaks the spongy, slimy creatures whose eyes, if they have them, are blinded by the first-time-seen sun, and whose lungs, if they have them (or something like them) are drowned in the caustic breezes of the super-marine world. Dazzled and shocked, these wrigglers squirm and recede, trying to hide clam-like in the algal sludge which this doting ship wears like a dressing gown. But plucked they must be, for the gulls are hungry and have no mercy on this chewy treat, no sorrow for this rare and delicious game.

I should focus. You should check me in my digressions. I grow old. Indeed, I forgot myself and my professed readiness to tell tales. I saw the elegant gulls and forgot myself. But you can forgive me, can you not? These gulls playing and pecking at the whale-like hulk: few sights have entered my eyes so majestically. Surely the wide-eyeing majesty of the Now – and not just any now, these gulls, this particular compelling Now – trumps the dustiness of the Used-to-be. Who can cast their thoughts into the distant land of past events? – Who can do this when muscles wrench at a thousand ropes and chants of “heave” have scarcely fallen dumb when they return with redoubled potency, when a historic floating beast of old rears its sleepy head at our cajoling tuggery?

But lo! The Now strikes again – look! The cavernous underbelly of the ship revealed, slowly rising from the water, and we see inside the cabins. A shabby cross section washes into view, rotten timber fallen away here and there to reveal glimpses of the domestic innards. Is that not an old desk, three legged with age, carbuncled with the many kisses of the subaqueous salts? Yes, by jove! An old desk! How startling to see such a familiar thing so changed, do long dunked and forgotten in the colossal bucket of the seas.

But forgotten no longer. We remember you, oh joyous desk of old. It is broad and sturdy, even in its ruined posthumos-ity. I’d wager these were the captains quarters! What think you on’t? And what treasures might there be, of gold and olden silver, of faraway climes and lost tribes. I tremble just to think.

But that was my tale, I see it now. It crept in under the door, all stealth. I’ve told my tale. All the while stopping and starting, ever digressing and circumambulating. But it seeped through - a crafty osmosis! The beans are spilled. The cat is out.

The sprightly goblin dances no more (nor jives the goblinly sprite!)

You see: I told it all in the not-telling. I spoke it in the nods and winks, in the gaps, in nonsense. It was between the lines - between the ropes!

Words but grab at meanings true
Feeble in their violence
Living holds the flowing you
And the rest is silence.

2010-06-22T17:37:00.000-07:00

Pangrams

A pangram is a sentence that uses all of the letters of the alphabet. The most famous English one being “the quickbrown fox jumps over the lazy dog”. For pangrammatists the ultimate quest is to find a sentence that contains each letter only once. This is known as a perfect pangram. There are a few in English but they make very little sense to anyone but the most absurdly well-dictionary-read lexophile. Here are two examples of perfect English pangrams, with explanations of the meanings in brackets below:

· Cwm fjord bank glyphs vext quiz.

(Carved symbols in a mountain hollow on the bank of an inlet irritated an eccentric person.)

· Squdgy fez, blank jimp crwth vox!

(A short brimless felt hat barely blocks out the sound of a Celtic violin.)

These perfect pangrams may strike most people as ridiculous and pointless achievements but as they become slightly longer, letting in some repeated letters, the hunt for pangrams produce some wonderfully odd sentences that we might never otherwise have the pleasure of considering. Take for example this Bulgarian pangram:

За миг бях в чужд плюшен скърцащ фотьойл.

(For a moment I was in someone else's plush squeaking armchair)

Or this French one:

Voix ambiguë d'un cœur qui au zéphyr préfère les jattes de kiwis.

(Ambiguous voice of a heart which prefers dishes of kiwis in the breeze.)

It seems to me, though I am very likely indulging myself in a ridiculous thought, that if they contain every letter in the alphabet then they must be saying something universal. If they are built of every type of particle in the known communicative landscape, surely they will be a kind of unifying patchwork quilt of representation that speaks of and for all the letters, for the language, for that culture’s communication itself. If you look deep enough into the pangram you will see an entire culture. Its reverberations will ricochet out of it from every letter like a thousand balls bouncing madly out of a swirling arrangement of ink. The typography of an alphabet itself, which will be necessary for it viewing (though even Braille has a design!) already gives away loudly whispered secrets of the culture. Look again at your language in its most reduced form, a single letter. Look at the tincture of a word, the letter a. Look at its handsome form, and how the ink curls about it lovingly. This is the ink’s favourite pastime, indeed, its passion. Ink loves nothing more than to form letters on the page. When we form a word in our mouths and on our faces the explosive complexity is of course to be celebrated. But ink lives for text. ‘Words dazzle and deceive because they are mimed by the face. But black words on a white page are the soul laid bare’ Guy de Maupassant.

Our words dip their bare feet in ink buckets and walk the papers of our diaries. Our thoughts leave inken footprints. And where there is no ink, our thoughts must leave some marks somehow. Just as Ahab’s peg leg leaves dents in the deck, his thoughts of Moby Dick bechisel his forehead:

‘Soon his steady, ivory stride was heard, as to and fro he paced his old rounds, upon planks so familiar to his tread, that they were all over dented, like geological stones, with the peculiar mark of his walk. Did you fixedly gaze upon that ribbed and dented brow; you would see still stranger footprints – the footprints of his one unsleeping, ever-pacing thought.’

-Herman Melville, Moby-Dick.

2010-06-22T17:26:00.000-07:00

Idleness

Idleness is, I think, our greatest passion. Industry is, surely, a disease. It is an itch upon our souls. A lolling rest is what best suits us; a sated, head drooping, floppy-bodied decumbency. So why am I not taking advantage of my freedom and lolling in some corner in worship to this ideal (or idleal, you might say, but this tongue-challenge may be too much effort for a true idler) why, you might ask, am I sat defiantly upright at the computer tapping away in a frenzy when I could be lazing in any number of positions elsewhere? Well, I’ve caught the disease. I’ve got the itch. I’m a sufferer of the animating impulse that drags our yawning souls from rest and pokes them into action, shoots at their feet to make them dance, showers them in itching powder that causes an itch so dire that it can only be relieved by a most furious industry. So here I am, writing. Un-idled.

But not for long, I feel my gut murmur, not for long will you toil. No? I question. But I can’t help it. Even when I resign myself to a stretch of relaxation, a period of placid inaction, the itching begins and how smart a lash that whip can give. No sooner have I leaned back on a sofa, gazed off out the window and let my eyelids do what they will, than the distant sound of a conceptual police siren can be heard, buzzing about my innards. These police live in my psyche and it is their chief aim to keep me as busy as possible. This, they believe, if they can be said to believe anything, is the finest state for a body to be in: industry, toil, labour, action. Couched in the depths of my unconscious they rest their bones when I am in toil, or they sit about playing cards in the station kitchen, brewing endless teas and coffees, discussing the weather in monotones of wagging insouciance.

But when I try my hand at this, when I even think of such loose behaviour, lights and buzzers begin to flash and whirr on their dashboard and they drop their cards mid-hand, leaping up into sanctimonious alert. Drinks are left to steam themselves out of desirability, hammocks hang inert, and cards fade in the cultural vacuum of ruler-less splay. Into their cars they leap and out of the murk they drive, out into my conscious mind they venture with powerful flairs, megaphones and placards, with harpoons, guns and grenades. They’ll do anything to wake me from my stupor and prick me into action. A modern day Gulliver I have become, whose Lilliputian superego plagues him from the inside in systematic formation. A single ant is as ineffectual as a single member of this constabulary. But just like ants, these officers of my psyche can get to work with marvellous potency when they work in concert. It is unbearable. I feel like the captain of a ship whose deceased mutinous crew have, ghost like, inhabited his body and are driving him which way they will.

So I don’t let myself idle much. It keeps them happy. Instead, I urge myself on. I whip myself inwardly, thrash my hide viciously, lest I become complacent and start to linger or loiter over some trifle. Yes, I beat myself up. As the anarchists like to joke “Help the police: Beat yourself up”. They may joke about it but people do it. People really do. From the inside.

And time passes without a care in the world for what it passes. It simply strides on. It does shock me sometimes when I consider it. Time just keeps on ticking and tocking and moving forwards. There’s no stopping it. So staunch and unstoppable. It plows on without asking for or needing anyone’s permission, without any support. Whether you condemn it or make it an object of your worship, it trundles along like some massive whale whose immensity will not allow for any change in momentum. If you pay no attention whatsoever, on it goes.

2010-05-22T16:21:00.001-07:00

Originally uploaded by William Kraemer

“Tell the sky about itself – Make it know.”

“Just keep quiet, it knows already. Give it space to grow.”

“Isn’t it big enough already?”

“No”

2010-05-22T16:05:00.000-07:00

When, at last, tomorrow is dawning
I’m crouched, brows furrowed,
In the burrow of morning.
Drowning in frowning king-uncrowning.

All passes under or over a bridge
All buzzes – feeble as a midge.

Then crouched when
It all happens again.

2010-05-22T15:57:00.000-07:00

Having

To truly own a copy is to hold it in your head
To have it always in your memory – till your dead.

Books can line your shelves and overflow with brilliant words
But leave them all unread and they’re as good as lifeless turds

Having only each other’s company to smell and guess
What’s harboured in the books against whose shoulders they press.

I’m learning one by rote – written on a scrap of paper
I glance at it less and less until its second nature

To speak or think the poem to myself when I’m alone
This is what it really is – in purest form – to own.

Possessions, money, past events, and all other forms of art
Must remain aloof from capture – must remain apart.

Only poems can live inside us – fully formed – alive
In fact I think the more I learn it’s their best way to thrive.

2010-05-08T16:07:00.000-07:00

Something

I was sitting in the staff room – most people called it the smoking room – watching a game of pool. I wasn’t interested in the pool. I was just staring blankly ahead of me really, listening to a conversation across the room. There were two visiting machinists, contractors called in to fix or modify something in the warehouse, I don’t know. They were sat over there talking through the thick smoke at each other, arguing. One had a newspaper in his hand. He said ‘look, it says here: “Police traced him to Silvertown where he was, lost, found.” That’s what it says and I see no problem with it.’

The other man shook his head emphatically causing the smoke which hung in the air around him to swirl about lazily, like a dirty blanket in slow motion. ‘You don’t have a problem because you don’t know about proper usage,’ responded the head-shaker, ‘It’s not a grammatical error per se, it’s more a stylistic fault. Trust me. Listen: It should really say “Police traced him to Silvertown where he was found lost.” And that sloppy journalist should be fired.’

Later that day, after work, I was passing through the staff room and I found the newspaper discarded on a seat. Leafing through it, I found the article. It concerned the police’s dealings with what the journalist called a lunatic. Police had deemed him "possibly dangerous". Clutching a toy mobile phone with no tele-communicative power whatsoever, the deranged man was found in Silvertown, East London after supposedly following text messages directly from God.

His story, outlined in the paper, was for me a sad one. Neighbours and attentive locals in his home town of Putney, South West London, knew him as “the mobile phone man”. He was often to be seen darting frantically and unsystematically about the town centre, gazing intently at the screen of his mobile phone, always jealously clutched with both hands and held near his face. Initially no one had noticed that the mobile phone was fake – that it was a children’s toy. Many pointed out his startling ability to find his way without his eyes, as he dashed about without their help, never crashing into anything, ever gazing into the phone.

Now in Police custody, the deeply upset man insists that his phone regularly receives text messages from God, whom he calls His Mighty. ‘The texts’, he explained to Police, ‘range from simple demands or advice on how to act to cryptic messages, puzzles or kōans.’ But this man’s God is not quite Him of the traditional Judaeo-Christian tradition. Not quite omniscient, not quite omnipotent. According to the lunatic, who gave his name as Gavin Stegosaurus, God ‘is a Luddite... [and] not fond of sending text messages. But, reluctantly, He recognises that it is a supremely efficient way to get in touch. He doesn’t like texting because he can’t get the hang of the predictive function. He often makes mistakes.’ So despite being, according to Mr Stegosaurus, ‘almost perfect’, His Mighty is prone to typos. However, the article went on to explain, Mr Stegosaurus can never be sure if His Mighty has planted the typo on purpose to test him, or as a clue to something, or to illustrate the irrationality existence, or something else like that; or if it’s just a mistake.
Frantic and alarming as he is at first sight, the people of Putney’s familiarity with Mr Stegosaurus left him largely un-noticed by the authorities. It wasn’t until he was spotted darting around Silvertown in his customary way that the Police were alerted by many of Silvertown’s frightened locals, people un-used to his outlandish behaviour. He was then apprehended on the grounds of ‘frightening behaviour’ and brought back to the station. Explaining himself to Silvertown’s police he cited a text message he says he received yesterday stating simply ‘Run as east as you can’ (sic). Unsure whether it was a predictive-born typo (east being a predictive-synonymous of fast) or a clear and direct demand, Stegosaurus ran East for more than ten miles, ending up tired and flustered in Silvertown, East London. Having decided, he said, that Silvertown was “quite east enough thankyou”, he set about waiting for further instruction from His Mighty – and this is what scared the residents. His method of waiting for further instruction involves the aforementioned bizarre darting about.

I read this article standing in the smoking room after work. My stomach gave a little painful churn of empathy. I thought of the man, deluded and insane, with his frantic with his toy phone. I read this sentence again: “The texts range from simple demands or advice on how to act to cryptic messages, puzzles or kōans.” What struck me was the clear, concise, almost textbook-like clarity of his spoken words. I realised I was surprised because I was assuming that if he was really mad he’d have only wild and whirling words, flailing limbs, and stuff like that. But on the contrary, he appeared to be able to express himself perfectly well. I hoped he would be ok. I hoped the police would go easy on him.

I put the newspaper down and looked at my watch. It was twenty past five. I’d been standing there for twenty minutes reading and re-reading the article. It was time to get home. I got out my phone to check if I had any messages. There were none. But, staring into the glowing blue screen, I tried to imagine what God might text me if he were to text me. I’d want a kōan. An irrational story. I’d want something mysterious like that. If God was straight with me, if He said something like “You could do with a haircut,” or “Don’t take that tone with your mother, she’s been good to you...” I’d be a little annoyed. If God must be at all, for me, He must be mysterious.

I knew one kōan off by heart. I read it in a book years ago. But if I didn’t already know it, I thought, it would be a good message to receive from God, or from the ether, from nowhere:

A monk asked Zhao Zhou to teach him.
Zhao Zhou asked, "Have you eaten your meal?"
The monk replied, "Yes, I have."
"Then go wash your bowl," said Zhao Zhou.
At that moment, the monk was enlightened.

To get that in a text, or find it somewhere. Perhaps written in chalk on the pavement. I would like that. That is what I thought, still standing there in the smoking room. Maybe I should write it in chalk upon the pavement. Yeah: “Upon the pavement”. That makes it sound olden and dignified - almost biblical. Something like that.

Upon.

I went home. I was hungry. But these thoughts didn’t leave me. Sitting on the train home I began to hope for a message. It would be good to receive a message. I understood Gavin Stegosaurus’s delusion. I almost envied it – its success. I supposed it was his intense desire to receive messages that gave him messages. This desire had escalated to the point of delusion.[1]

The more I considered it, the more I shared this desire. I wanted to share in the hallucination. I wanted to hear the message, any message really. It was the being-contacted I wanted, the message matters less. Whatever the message was I could make something special of it. If something appears as if by magic it doesn’t matter how boring the thing is – magic ditch water is still magic, still exciting. I didn’t mind if, like the lunatic, I was contacted in an unconventional manner, by an deity who couldn’t get the hang of texting.

I sat at home over my microwavable dinner, stuffing forkfuls of it into my mouth un-tastingly, musing over messages, deity contact, the possibly vocal ether, words found on pavements, the universe sending messages, and things like that. My mobile phone gave its customary text message receiving shudder in my pocket and my heart jumped. Throwing down my fork, still laden with a chivey new potato, I scrambled for my phone. It was a message from my network provider, advertising their roaming service. My heart slowed down. I stared at my phone reproachfully, disappointed and embarrassed. How childish, I thought.

Delete. That made me feel a little bit better. The catharsis of deleting the text, even though it had already got to me – got its teeth into me – since I’d read it. I enjoyed deleting it. My heart rate slowed back down.

I finished my dinner and began to scheme. If I can’t get a message then maybe I could give one. If the universe won’t deign to contact me with its mysterious words, if God won’t text me, maybe I could contact someone else in the guise of a deity. I didn’t want to mess with someone’s mind, send them running off the East London or make them cut their hair. I just wanted them to receive a message from nowhere.
The kōan. I could write it in chalk somewhere. Someone might find it and feel contacted, feel that thrill. It is a thrill I was only imagining. Everyone knows how exciting it is to receive a letter in the post, especially a long one, hand written pen-on-paper. It is a good feeling, like being cradled in the hands of a giant. And so to read the kōan on the pavement, I hoped, might be calming in this way. Beatific?
I stayed up late that night clutching an old piece of chalk. Don’t know why I ever even owned chalk but luckily, I had some. And I waited until the quietest hour of night. 3.30 I reckoned. After most people go to bed, before most people get up. I was going to be tired at work the next day but I had to do this. It had to be purged. The urge was so strong. I couldn’t hallucinate somehow. I knew it would be false. So I had to experience the reception of the message vicariously.

Like a vicar, vicariously. I was suddenly the priest of this new church. A tiny church of one. One kōan. One small story. A speck of chalky dust in the pantheon. The universe in a grain of sand. Well not quite: I went out with my chalk, warming in my sweating palm. I could hear cars far away. No human sounds. Only machines. Middle-distant engines.

Footnote:
[1] “The state of psychical rest was ...disturbed by the peremptory demands of internal needs. When this happened, whatever was ...wished for was simply presented in a hallucinatory manner...” (Freud, Two Principles of Mental Functioning, 1911).

2010-04-19T11:14:00.000-07:00

The Knight Watchman

As the night dozes on
He keenly watches, and
Becomes more wakeful -
Like a wheel rolling uphill
on its own.

Tiredness is conquered.
For the bravery of this
Mad knight knows no
purpose.

His homophonous cousin
Discards silent, invisible Zs
They float off upwards with
ease.

While our hero's extra letter
Simply gets in the way -
As if glued to his
Behind.

Kould it be diskarded?

No, our knight without
His first letter would
Lose his mind - though
He thinks he's lost it
Already.

But he remains defiantly
Awake - and his watch
Counts many many
Hours.

His patience buzzes
Like an impatient insect.
Except he has no patience
So what is that
Noise?

The tidal wave of morning
Vibrating the pylons and
Sending its message on
Ahead.

Only concussion will
Salve him now -
And in his madness,
He hopes for it.

2010-03-30T14:05:00.000-07:00

I have often wondered how I might react if, when walking over a bridge, my hat were to be blown off my head by the wind and cast over the balustrade down into the Thames. The immediacy of the realisation that my hat was lost forever would surely quell any upset or franticness – save perhaps a start and a little gasp of regret. Then, calmly, I'd watch the hat flipping and spinning down into the water, always at low tide in my imagination. And I’d be already calm long before it hits the water. It is the immediacy of this resignation that appeals to me. Yes, I realise it now, this imagined scenario of losing a hat to the river, losing it first to the wind and then to the river, this immediate loss, it appeals to me! Sudden resignation must taste odd and serene. I run through this scenario in my head often. I'm sure there must be a cathartic pleasure in the snap-irreversibility of the loss. I watch myself in my mind’s eye watching the hat flip and spin, not yet even in the water, and then when it hits, watching it float off downstream, smiling, my pulse temperately keeping time, making as healthful music as ever. I'd wish the hat well in its travels and thoughts of a new hat would warm my bare head.

2010-03-29T09:39:00.000-07:00

In the morning we go

To the place with the logs
And with other dogs.

In the morning we go
There’s grass and trees
My face by his knees
He moves very slowly
And it's almost holy.

In the morning we go
To run! now's our chance
While he’s lost in his stance
But I stand by and guard
Close, within a yard
While he waves and sways about
Churning foes, slow, in and out.

In the morning we go
I can’t see the others in the fight
If I could I’d surely bite
But loyal as my kind must be
I stand by him and try to see
Try to stand as firm as a rock
Working maybe as a block
Somehow fending off the ghost
He battles daily after toast.

In the morning we go
Even if I am no help
I stay calm and daren’t yelp
And every day he wins I think
At least when I see him blink
And straightn up, pick up our leads
The enemy surely recedes
And then the day begins a new
I bark and sigh, as you say: “phew!”
Run! I frolic, full of glee
I’m glad he’s beaten that Tai Chi.

2010-03-21T08:03:00.000-07:00

Staples

As a child of about nine years old I was told by some school friends that someone’s mother or father, I forget which, was planning to melt down staples and make the world’s largest staple in an attempt to achieve the Guinness world record for the largest staple. Thoroughly enthused, I set about collecting old staples, of which there were thousands, from unused patches of the classroom display boards. I can’t figure out why (or if) I was actually allowed to do this since it isn’t the least bit edifying and (if I remember correctly) we weren't allowed in the classrooms during lunch or breaktimes... but I certainly remember standing there for what felt like hours (but may only have been minutes) troubling my feeble young finger nails with the pluck-pluck-plucking collection of hundreds of staples, all the while day dreaming rapturously of the stardom I might perhaps attain with a possible mention in the Guinness book of records.

Nothing, as far as I know, ever came of it all.

2010-03-10T14:29:00.001-08:00

Some Words

Butter sweet victory.

Hispectacled (Hispanic and bespectacled).

The mine newt is the smallest of the newts.

A nanometre (one millionth of a millimetre) is how much a fingernail will grow in a second.

Hypotyposis - Vivid description of a scene, event, or situation, bringing it, as it were, before the eyes of the hearer or reader. (OED.)

At the slender hands of fate.

Pond scum is our noble ancestor. Though it is not often the subject of totemisation or deification. Is there an ancient god of algae?

Freudian ship.

Voracio: the hungrier brother of Horatio.

What do the curtains think? What do they think of me?

He turned out to be a bugler, not a burglar. The police let him go.

I am an ant on the wall past which a school mistress leads an unruly child by the ear. I understand nothing. They are mysterious giants. My antennæ tap onwards.

A truly old saw will remorselessly rust in dendrological rings which, although mimicing the circular years plotted inside a tree trunk, actually plot the years of sawing them down.

Can you water plants with saliva?

Our words dip their bare feet in ink buckets and walk the papers of our notebooks. See these inken footprints? Thoughts have walked here.

2010-03-10T14:17:00.000-08:00

Apple Simulacrumble (- a poem from the oil dungeon)

I've had a thought, or p'rhaps its two
That while I'm here, my mind is goo,
That while I wait and wait for five oclock
Sitting on my Sisyphean rock,
Lingering unwatched and falsely free
Pretending I'm at work with industry
All I gain is money in the bank
While my brain is emptying to blank
Back to how it was before the first...

...Ichthyoids sprouted legs and clambered out of the algae.

2010-02-22T16:05:00.000-08:00

Greer on Art

'One must ask oneself the question in our society: Can any painting be worth the total yearly income of a thousand families? And if we must answer that it is, and the auction reports tell us so, then I think we are forced to consider the possibility that the art on which we nourish ourselves is sapping our vitality and breaking our hearts.'

Germaine Greer, 1979.

(from a documentary film Town Bloody Hall, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0217853/)

2010-02-15T05:47:00.000-08:00

Some Thoughts

When we die we are like an unfinished sentence. Even if we say before our deaths that we are happy to die, ready to die, prepared for death, finished with life, we are still, I think, cut off without conclusion. The end of life is no conclusion, no culmination. It is a withering, a decay, a wilting into blankness, a loss of voice, a truncation or curtailment. Perhaps this way of looking at it is a symptom of my under-bubbling assumption that we are in some way – or that we should be – immortal. And perhaps this, in turn, is a symptom of my fear of death.

I think I may have vaguely assumed human immortality in order to calm myself. Because death does frighten me. It is the end of all events. When we sit idle but alive, we are still an event, no matter how idle we may try to be. Meaning can be read in the absence of action. Signs linger in the silence. Words that we have not said sit on our lips and lurk in our throats. When we do anything it finds meaning in the context of an infinite number of other things we are not doing. But when we are dead (and forgotten) our being, if there is any, finds context only in its opposite. We are “not living”. The dead thing is only interesting apophatically.

Of course, there will always be those tender souls who extend their care and interest to everything, those studiers of stones, inspectors of dirt, cradlers of waste, and the particularly rare investigators of the vacuum. But these are few and far between and even their gaze is not a familiar one, not a loving one. And so death begins as an aposeopesis. The voice of our being becomes silent. But since even silence can have life, it is only later that death ends in oblivion, when all is forgotten and wiped away and even the silence loses its voice.

2010-02-09T13:03:00.000-08:00

Vicambulated Words

Walking poems on foot are won
Compoesied on the pavement drum
Now I lope – that is the trope –
With neither pen nor paper, note.

The rhythm of my cushioned heels
Besqueakered on the puddle ‘crete
Allow my inkless arms to swing – and in my mind I sing.

The music of the marching bands lives inside my arcing hands.

I barely stop while traffic shudders,
This’s a feeling unlike others.

This surface-given rhythm tonic
Braces me and, by mnemonic,
Liberates a secret self
Hid in accidental stealth
Given incremental wealth
Of breath and thought – in short –
Of health.

2010-01-30T19:06:00.000-08:00

Squirm

I arrived home late. I was drunk and had managed to lose one of my gloves - the left glove. I'd been using my hat to keep my left hand warm. It wasn't working too well. It was bitterly cold outside, the middle of december.

I stumbled into the kitchen and leaned against the radiator. It was turned off and presented the side of my leg with cold metal. I could feel it through my trousers. It was 2am. What did I expect? The heating was off. I was tiredness. Hunger. Drunkeness. My head lolled.

Summoning strength from somewhere I opened some cupboards and investigated:
bananas: 2,
brazil nuts: eight,
rice: five hundred grams,
cornflakes: nearly finished.

Stuffing a brazil nut into my mouth, I opened a banana. The brazil nut tasted of vodka. So did the banana. The skin inside my mouth was infused, it was scorched, with the taste of vodka. It was like how a bright light lingers in your vision, how the filament of a bulb stays on after you've looked away. Thats how it was. This strong Russian drink stayed in my mouth. I didn't have the energy to complain.

I sat down on the chair and noticed that the kitchen was unusually tidy. All the surfaces were clear and even the hob had been scrubbed to perfection. The plates and mugs, all the cutlery, put away neatly; even the tiles around the sink, it was all clean. It sparkled like a show-kitchen.

I threw my banana skin and missed the bin.

I put my head down on the table and rested, trying to collect myself. "Collect yourself" I said aloud. At least I tried to say it aloud. The croak that surfaced would not have passed for communication had there been anyone to hear it. It sounded more like a burp.

I burped. A real one. It tasted of sausage-meat. It came from deep within.

"Collect yourself" I said again, after clearing my throat with a raspy cough. How to collect, how to collect? I thought. What an odd way to put it: collect. Collect is a what you do with postage stamps or rare coins, not drunk, banana-skin lobbing failures. But, enough!

You know what I mean, I thought, I know what I mean. I know what I mean. You and I are both I. Oh shut up.

Stand up. Stand up and go bed.

I lifted my head from the table, making to stand. A scrap of paper was stuck to my forehead. It obscured my vision. I stood motionless, staring at the white paper too close to my eyes to focus.

Gravity applied itself and the paper came unstuck, fluttering down from my face to the floor by my feet. I must have leant my head on it unawares. It had been on the table and my greasy forehead had...

I stared down at the scrap of paper. It said nothing. It was blank. It looked as though there might be writing on the other side: some ink had bled through.

It's not mine, I thought. I didn't put it there. I glanced about the kitchen again. It was pretty much the only thing out of place in the whole room, aside from the banana skin. I leant forward and tried to pick up the paper with my gloved hand. Breathing heavily like an overworked horse. I fumbled.

What do I know of horses? I was breathing like a drunk.

I could have taken off the glove. I should have taken it off, or used my left hand (which, you will remember, was without glove). But I was too proud. I've started so I'll finish, I thought, and vaguely felt that this was a truly noble credo. I saw the mastermind chair in my minds eye: special subject: picking up scraps of paper from linoleum floors with gloves on, drunk.

Got it. Finally got it.

I turned it over in my hand, the paper. It had a message written in felt tip. It said "We are not a house that writes notes to each other so I won't leave you guys a note saying how angry I am that you never clean up after yourselves." It was scrawled in messy, angry, handwriting. It was Harriet's handwriting.

The felt tip pen is an inappropriate tool for writing, I thought to myself, it was designed for children, it was designed for colouring-in. Not for note writing.

I read the note through a couple of times. I scrumpled it up. I wasn't angry. I wasn't anything much. I just needed to pee. I threw the ball of paper at the bin. It missed and rolled off out into the hallway.

The toilet seemed like a far too obvious choice as the recipient of my urine. An unspeakable urge led me to the balcony. It was close by. The door opened out directly from the kitchen.

Suddenly out in the cold again I silently cursed my lost glove, waving my cold bare hand about pointlessly. Wherever you are, I thought, I hope you're suffering as I am. I imagined the singular glove impaled upon a railing, waving slightly in the wind. Waving at nobody, who was nearby.

But the bladder's urgent demands put a stop to my mute curses. Out came my penis, out into the biting cold it pointed, out off the balcony. The steaming urine hurled itself down to the carpark below, like liquid lemmings. And I grinned.

The steam was happifying.

Going back inside, I stepped over the banana skin and kicked the little scrumbled ball of paper. It rolled off downstairs, bouncing out of sight. I made my way upstairs in search of slumber. But before I made it anywhere near slumber I was confronted by a horse.

Outside my bedroom door stood the heavily over laden clothes horse, valiantly serving as the drying rack for the everyone's damp clothes. Everyone in the house that is. Four people, me included.

The horse was blocking my bedroom door because there was nowhere else to put it. It was dark and quiet on the landing and the jumble of haphazardly hung clothes loomed at me. I nudged it to the side so as to squeeze past.

The tiny nudge I attempted was not tiny. Alcohol amplifies. It was more of a rough shove. The horse teetered for a moment on one leg and then toppled over. In the darkness I heard glass smashing. I had no idea what it could be.

I stood still and sighed at the mess I had created. A door opened upstairs. I had clearly woken somebody. It was Harriet. She plodded down the stairs to where I was standing and hissed "What was that noise? What are you doing?"
"I don't know" I said, not bothering to whisper.
"Shhhhh!" she grimaced, gesturing at Anne's bedroom door, indicating that I might wake her.
I leaned against the wall and emptied my lungs with a sigh, staring straight ahead. I let my head loll a little.
"You're drunk aren't you." she whispered, a condemnation rather than a question.
I nodded and said "very". My nodding carried on, becoming continuous with a more drunken head lollery which had no implications of assent. Who could say at which point exactly I stopped nodding and began lolling?

"Help me with this then" she spat, whisperingly, lifting the horse back onto its legs.
I watched her do it but stood motionless myself. Help her with what? I thought, she's done it already.

Where the horse had fallen we could just make out the smashed remnants of what looked like it had been a milk bottle.
"Go and get the dust pan and brush," she ordered.
I attempted a shrug but gave up half way due to lack of effort. I remained still and glared at her. Or was it just staring? No, glare is right, it wasn't a stare. It was more glum than a stare. It was a dumb glum glare.

How different things would have been if she'd asked "Why the dumb glum glare?" We would have laughed. But she didn't say that.

I was breathing heavily in that way drunk people do. So confounded by alcohol is the body that it must expend great effort just to keep ticking over. A blazing fire in the firebox, so to speak, just to keep the engine running idle.

Some time passed in which nothing can really be said to have happened. I don't know how much time it was.

Harriet had disappeared when I next became aware of myself. I was still standing in the same place, still giving the dumb glum glare, only now it had no object: it struck the wall behind where she had been standing. I switched off the glare, collected myself, and carefully manoevered round the clothes horse into my room. I had forgotten about the milk bottle.

As I wrestled free of my clothes, which clung to me with undue stubbornness, I heard a sharp knock at my door. Ratatat tat is how it sounded. Harriet barged in moments later without awaiting my response. I had one leg still in my trousers, and one leg out. Glancing at my bare leg for a moment she walked over to the chair by my desk and sat down.
"You better have some water" she said, softly, as though I were too drunk to detect how patronising she was being, "otherwise you're going to regret it in the morning".
I grunted, nodding slightly, and continued unwrapping myself.
She raised her eyebrows disdainfully. "Shall I get you some water?" she asked.
I shrugged, but it may have passed for part of my disrobing as I was at that moment also trying to remove my jacket.
She gave a loud, holier-than-thou sigh and walked out of the room briskly. She had, it appeared, taken it upon herself to save me from vice, which I was clearly drowning in. As soon as she left I forgot she existed and continued slowly, clumsily, undressing.
I did so with my eyes closed and a faint smile on my lips.
I was warm in the syrupy-slow glow and tingle of somnolent inebriation. I tried to say something like that to myself. I wanted to verbally acknowledge the glowing and the tingling so as to make a landmark in time, so as to make the feeling a more conspicuous event. I didn't want it to pass me by. I tried to mumble "this is syrupy" but little came of the attempt.
I became distracted in the act of trying to remove both my socks simultaneously using the adjacent foot to remove the adjacent sock. This failed also. I still dont know if it is possible.
"This is a good feeling", I managed to say eventually, as I witnessed my arms reaching to remove my socks in a more conventional manner. It really felt as though these things were being done for me, as though my limbs were being awkwardly thrown about their business by an amateur puppeteer. I observed it all from a drowsy remove, hiding "aside" on stage in my own play.
At some point Harriet found her way back into my room with a large glass of water, a bucket, and various other things which she dumped onto my desk. I took as little notice of it as I could. I squirmed about on the bed wearing only my pants. I did so with vague aim of squirming myself under the duvet, but mostly just to be squirming.
Looking up momentarily I caught Harriet's unctous glower and decided to squirm more vigourously, provoking her. It seems I had, in her eyes, reduced myself to a wallowing beast. Her eyes, if they saw this, saw true.
She began talking at me and fussing about beside the bed. She tried to get me properly under the duvet, where I half-was already, and tuck me in. I kept squirming.
She spoke to me as though I were a child. Perhaps I was a child. But I felt there was no need for her fussing. I had made it to bed hadn't I?
The squirming simmered down to stillness and I began, very swiftly, to drop off to sleep. But still she was there surrounding me with stern words, with cajoling words; thrusting a glass of water in my face, or trying to plump the pillow beneath my head. A constant stream of words flowed out of her mouth. They were loud words that struck my ears relentlessly. I caught nothing of their meaning. I had no wish to.

The fussing continued and seemed like it would never stop. I had to do something. The syrup that I had been squirming in earlier had now cooled and solidified, forming a hard case around me. I felt unable to move a muscle. But I had to, she was driving me mad.

As anger welled up in me I opened my eyes. Then suddenly I burst our of bed and stood up. I stood perfectly balanced, as though I were sober, and held my hands up as one does to a fast approaching car. "Stop making sense" I said, "just stop". She stared back at me with her mouth open, frozen half way through an admonishing sentence. Then her mouth shut with an inaudible pop, like one mimicing a fish.

I climbed back into bed and fell asleep immediately.

2010-01-22T10:27:00.001-08:00

Poem

The words that are supposed to feature
Here have not arrived
Or maybe they were here before and
Now they've gone away.

I don't know the which one is true
and neither do you.

2010-01-15T09:33:00.000-08:00

March 30th 2008

My friend Kurt was hosting a braai*. I went along and as the evening became colder and colder I huddled closer to the hot coals, ate more meat, and drank more beer. It was a sunday night and, at about 11pm, I suddenly realised that all the other guests had left. They all had work the next day. Being blissfully unemployed myself I hadn't given a second thought to staying late and getting drunk. Kurt had work the next day too so I thought it best to leave. He saw me out and I slowly, drunkenly, found my way to the bus stop.

Finding my seat on the bus I rifled through my bag to see what might occupy my mind for the journey. Selecting The Guardian Great 20th Century Poets T.S. Eliot booklet I slumped forward into a solipsistic bodily scrunch. The bus terminated at my destination so I had no worry of missing my stop. With dogged focus, then, I willingly dove into the booklet and became utterly engrossed. My poem of choice was The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock. It was the first one in the booklet. I read it slowly, mouthing the words and perhaps whispering to myself. Never have I enjoyed a poem so much. I read lines again and again, dwelling on couplets, tasting rhyme, licking and flicking every word with my serpentine tongue. When my understanding failed me I enjoyed the rythmes and the rhymes. Sometimes I grasped Eliot's message (or thought I had) and cast my eyes sideways out of the window to mull it over. What a brilliant poem, what a wholesome meal, a perfect kebab to my drunkeness. Dubious meat and underfried chips didn't come into it. I forgot my cheap urges, Prufrock had me dazed and sated.

I had just finished the poem when, looking up, I saw the giant billboard that announces Elephant and Castle's tired commerciality. Clutching my little poetry pamphlet I tottered down stairs to alight. I had got off the bus at Newington Butts, one stop before the station where it terminates. This suited me well. Looking about me I caught sight of the London Eye Ferris Wheel looming over the skyline to the West. Each pod was brightly lit with purple lights and I considered taking a photo. These thoughts were interrupted by the smell of dog shit. Looking down I noticed I was standing in a large deposit. My photographic ambitions gave up the ghost and, cursing, I wandered over to step in a puddle. Walking to and from a puddle and scraping the sole of my shoe on the curb I managed to remove most of the offending substance. I started my tramp home.

The pooey misfortune that my shoe befell soon made its exit from the theatre of my thoughts and I noticed the poetry that remained in my hand. I opened the booklet and, recapturing some of the thrill of the bus journey, returned to the beginning - to The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock. As my legs beat out the necessary rhythmes of travel on the pavement I found I could not read the poem on its own terms. Prufrock was going to have to submit to my beat. Narrowly missing a face-smack collision with a lamp post I glanced ahead for any forthcoming obstacles of like danger. Nothing: the pavement was clear for my ambulatory reading. Almost without volition I started to beatbox, something I often do carelessly while peeing, or walking. As the beats got going, in time with my steps, I leant a keener focus to the poetry. "Let us go then, you and I", came the first line, attempting a female RnB style vocal song that, I thought, was fitting to the area. No doubt it would have sounded awful but, as far as I'm aware, no one heard it. I barely heard it myself. The pavements were deserted but the road was busy and the loud traffic fortuitously drowned me out. I could sing out my fullest lungs, for better or for worse, with social impunity. And I did. The whole poem found a new life blaring from my lips. Interspersed with beatbox, I warbled and whined every last line of Eliot's poem vaguely noticing, at times, the presence of fellow pedestrians; but there were so few and so unobtrusive that I rarely noted them enough to check my extravagances.

My feet had carried me home and I extinguished the noisy fire in my throat. My brother could be asleep, it was midnight and he had work the next day. Still reeling slightly from my self-absorbed extacy, I crept up to my room and undressed. Moments later I found myself curled up in bed and a haphazard sleep overtook me. I felt at once log-heavy and restless. Half-dreaming, half awake, I began to sweat uncomfortably. I needed to urinate too. After some time I heaved my log of a body up and felt my way to the toilet, eyes half closed. As my bladder gradually lost weight I had a premonition. I saw my next act in my minds eye; it would be the final flourish of my wild evening, an act worthy of a poem, a ritual offering to Prufrock and Eliot, and poetry itself. Suddenly wide awake I shook the last lingering liquids from me and scurried upstairs to my room, where the magic was to take place.

For six months I had been collecting copper coins on the window sill outide my bedroom window. There, upon flaking paint and years of caked bird shit, I had cast my coppers whenever they began to burden my wallet with a weight incongruous to their value. Green with oxidation, and grey with London's various grimes, the collection of copper coins were in the slow process of blending into their new shit-caked home. I opened the window and began plucking up the coins from their bed of filth. When I had them all they filled my hand. A ball of coins ready to throw! I leaned out of the window and waited for the perfect moment. There was no one on the pavement as far as I could see in either direction but a few cars were passing. I waited until the cars had disappeared. Heaving a sigh of exertion I threw the coins up as high as I could out into the middle of the road. Spinning through the air they twinkled in the street lamp light and for a moment there was quiet as the coins seemed to stop in thick air. Then a roar as they fell in a wondrous clinking mess. It sounded like a thousand mice beating tiny tin drums in jarring confusion. The vast clinking died down to a single tinkle as all but one coin found rest. I watched this last surviving coin roll a long way from the centre of this central scatter reigon. The fugitive coin rolled on for a few seconds, in perfect parrallel to the pavement, just as a car would drive, following the road. In a moment the last coin gave up and fell.

In quiet awe I surveyed the patternless shapes of the dull glitter I had sprinkled in the street. Biting me out of my awe the cold gave me a shiver and the approaching growl of a car plunged the scene back into movement. I caught a final glance of the coins lying inert beneath the wheels and I ducked back into my room.

In the morning all the coins were gone.

*The South African term for a barbeque. Braai is short for braaivleis (pronounced "bry-flays") which is Afrikaans for "roasted meat".

2010-01-15T09:19:00.000-08:00

Blob

On our own we stand, not part of all but lone and full of fright. In a kind of night our souls are out as boats that float in need of wind, as moats that go in speed at spin, as goats that mow the lawn just like the moats as round and round they go (the flat sphere would serve here well in what I tell were it not that it has two of what I must use one).

But back to the point: do not you find that kin and kind, both near and far, yes: all that are, do scrape their sides with one and each but to no end; at least not to the end they bend: the one they want?

No, in truth, there can be none of what we seek at heart, the core, the pith, the more, the most, oh yes: the boast of man of time in all. Of what do I speak? Of Love. The bit of life in which we fuse and join and come to one from two who were not glue, who were not stuck, no not as such, but struck by fuck is all. I pall. I gall. And if in this I fail: I fall, I wrong, I do you bad, then leave me be for that is what you can’t but do, that’s your soul choice to chew.

2009-06-12T02:58:00.000-07:00

Nothing disgusts a stone

For he’s a stalwart, stout, withstander
Never does the stone meander
Staying put in calm repose
Letting rain pour down his nose
He sits still un-phased all day,
Or moves if moving’s made his way.

Such tolerance does Peter show,
(I’ve named him that to slake my woe
It doesn’t work, in fact it’s worse
His character becomes a curse)

Such tolerance, I say, he flaunts
That he my tangled soul behaunts
Leaving me in such a state
I’m driven to enumerate
As though in Jeremiahs wake
My moaning qualms of stomach ache.

In silly couplets to and fro
I crane my neck and curl my toe
To make the words repeat their sounds
Like barking mad and hungry hounds

But back to Peter ugh! The stone,
The things that sitting all alone
Exhibits not a jot of pain
Bearing stiff and strong his frame
Drowning, burning, freezing, all:
Nothing does the stone appal

Housed in thickness to the core,
Still as a photo, what a bore!
But how I envy him the more,
For all his bland unthinking ways,

At least he doesn’t scream or shout
Or fail at life and freeze in doubt
For he is always frozen still
Can act for neither good nor ill
I see him on this window sill
Or anywhere, he is as cool,
As empty as the dumbest fool

With frogs and worms asquirm beneath
Or hurled by children on the beach
Its all as nothing to this ball
Whose elegance is very small
Or lacking, yes, its not at all!

Indeed the poor thing doesn’t own
A single virtue, quick or prone,
There’s not an ounce of life inside
His rough and weathered lichened hide
He might just envy me in turn
As I have life, can love and learn
While he has nothing you could burn
Nothing giving joy or pain
His life’s the same again, again
As every moment forever more
Is just the same as the one before.

2007-02-08T18:15:00.000-08:00

Idiom.

A form of speech peculiar to a people or place. It comes from the latin “idiome” which means a ‘peculiarity in language’. This in rooted in the greek “idioumai” which means ‘I make my own’.

I will make my own idioms.

To dance while the trees are warbling.
To glance sideways at a mouse.
To slide a pebble.
To hassle the grandfather lock.
To make the most of a compost heap.
To graduate in machination.
To cast a fleeting triumph at a teeting fly-umph.
To match a moose with its goose.
To gather together without blathering heather.
To salute your teleology.
To grab the hot cakes now while they’re still too hot.
To found an ill founded argument on an iller still founded barge.
To slip into something “more comfortable” while the comfortable slips into you.
To bad-mouth a stranger for a shilling.
To shiver uncontrollably at talk of tripods.
To spell a word wrong on purpose.
To hail a taxi with a rotten fish.
To defenestrate a book before the last page.
To glare feindishly at Terry Venables.
To practice witchcraft till the cows dissappear.
To flog a mattress with a battered moth.
To grate granite onto your pasta with a diamond raisin.
To pencil futility onto a waif’s eyelids while she sleeps.
To emulate Freud with the butter.
To grease the pan before the yogurt has boiled.
To sit round the fire with a bellicose uncle.
To ride a bed out of bedriddendom.
To mend a broken idiom.
To tend a flock of women.
To alter foreign currency rates with the wave of a hand.
To sneeze on a cabinet minister.
To chesse off a hamster.
To gamble your entire house on a game of pat the mat.
To explore the pabulum.
To take the nails out of a mans hat only to pin them to his overalls.
To gab til noon without a frewn.
To coagulate like milk.
To haggle down dust.
To dust down a haggle.
To dust a bedraggled haggler.
To haggle the dust out of Haggerston.
To mop your brow with a seive.
To seive your brow with a mop.
To reign supreme in the world of onions.
To fart like a rat.
To copulate in clear view of the washingmachine.
To find mockery in your oats.
To fill your pants with glory until theres no summer left in Brighton.
To gallop home without your pathetic winnings.
To osmote.
To grow breasts in your eyes.
To whip frenzy into the monacled.
To skip frenzied into a bollack hole.
To allow oneself a barrel of barley but no pantothenic acid.
To generate one’s own triangle.
To smack Henry in the jaw with a spade.
To-wit-to-woo when you’ve only half a trouser.
To lose yourself in dirty washing before the weekend even begins.

2006-06-23T17:08:00.000-07:00

idea for a novella:

Written in the fifth person, the work ironically stars only 4 people who all died at the same moment on different continents and arrived in Heaven together at the same time. God was drunk and he spliced their personalities together (something he has never done before; but when you're omnipotent and inebriated... you could do just about anything - no, actually anything) anyway, these four people who are now one dead person in heaven spend months queuing in the heaven complaints department waiting for their complaint to be processed, waiting for the hearing etc. (the queues are so long because heaven - containing only good things - is distinctly boring and the human spirit (though disembodied) NEEDS something bad to complain about; moreover, something to complain about with other humans and seek solidarity through. The novella follows the ins and outs of four elements of this ghost-splicee, how they interact, what they think of each other, how they confuse parts of themselves with each other and vice verse, how they get on and realise that all humans have a quintessence that is profoundly similar, how they discuss Mozart, how they become so interwoven that they don't know which part is which and eventually decide that they were probably just one person all along and no splicing ever occured (though by this time they are right near the front of the queue and so they decide to lodge a complaint anyway: the water in the plentiful drinking fountains dotted about heaven is one centigrade too hot. Despite the fact that this is untrue, they decide on it anyway, and by the time they get the front of the queue, they all believe that it is actually true and have forgotten that they made it up; needless to say they are all outraged, or should i say s/he/it is outraged.

2006-04-26T03:04:00.000-07:00

I propose a world where novels are drastically reduced in size. Now, its not unknown to cut a book down to size for a blurb or an abstract, or even to reduce a book to one paragraph while lampooning the storyline as that section in the Guardian does. But I want to go further than that. In this world of fast food, even faster cars, rapid Internet, one-click purchase, instant coffee, instant noodles! In this world of tiny digital cameras, mobile phones the size of an ant that crawls in your ear, with video cameras on every wall and in every pocket, every hand, recording every moment of even the most banal corners of the universe! In this world of the guiltless mp3 larceny, where everything can be downloaded… from the photos of your brothers wedding in Tokyo to the sound of a South African ferret gnawing on a tree stump… surely the novel will face death or transformation – and a medium of such promise, such inexorable strength, will never chose death, no… not death, surely transformation – and transformation it shall be. Transformation at all costs.

But into what? Well let’s see now. It must be small: it will have to fit into the smallest of pockets – why not wear it as a contact lens? No, too fiddly. In the time it takes to get it in and out five hundred thousand photos will have been taken, half a million songs will have been downloaded, nine hundred burgers will have been eaten… and so on. So it needs to be small – ok – what else? Fast… its got to be over in flash, its got to smack you round the face, shock you, pluck your heart strings tenderly, frighten your wits out of you, split your sides, make you cry, enlighten you, teach you – yes! It’ll be western capitalism’s answer to Satori – over in an instant yet resounding for a lifetime. Who has time to read Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy today? They were paid by the word and wrote too many pages. We need the essence, the core, the soul, the spirit, the concentrated nucleus of a novel: one sentence – one pithy little sentence. Pith shall become the novel. We’ll print them out on little cards. I can see it now…

“Go on failing. Go on. Only next time, try to fail better.”-Samuel Beckett

“Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.”-Pablo Picasso

“I believe that truth has only one face: that of a violent contradiction.”-Georges Bataille

“Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it.”-Salvador Dali

“If your everyday life seems poor, don't blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is not poverty and no poor, indifferent place.”
-Ranier Maria Rilke

“In short, I am an idle fellow who pisses his time away. I have absolutely nothing to show for my labours except my genius.”
-Henry Miller

2006-04-17T03:42:00.000-07:00

I arrived and sat down on a large and comfy looking sofa. It was not as comfortable as it looked. Those tumescent leather looking 4-seaters they have in bars are rarely as comfortable as they look. I looked at my watch; it was only 7:30; that meant I was half an hour early. Slouching back I glanced about me warily, trying to affect a cool nonchalant mien. By backside and a large part of my back sank smoothly into the morassic swelling on which I had chosen to sit. Immediately regretting it, I sat bolt upright. Remember your posture William, I said to myself, just relax upright – yes, that’s right, its almost as comfy as anything else – just relax upright. Nodding slightly at my inner dictum ordinance I forgot myself for a few moments and gazed emptily at the glass coffee table in front of me.

A barmaid laughed loudly nearby and I was brought back to myself. Uneasy again, I checked her face to see if she had been laughing at me. Of course not, I scolded myself inside, you were hardly doing anything strange, now just get settled and relax… UPRIGHT!
Ok… ok, I replied, beginning to wish that my mind were a little more unified in its discourses.
But a discourse is an exchange, I corrected myself, not a soliloquy… and even a soliloquy is a species of exchange since it has an audience.
Yes ok, ok! I’m happy to talk to myself, I replied, but at least lets call it… lets call it… I don’t know… an introspective monologue?
Ok, lets.
So where were we?
Don’t you mean “Where am I?”
Yes I suppose I do, but you know what I mean, what was I saying?
I think I was just trying to relax and avoid attracting attention while I wait for my friends on this corpulent settee in this meretricious excuse for a drinking establishment.
I should write that down.
Yes I should.

Again, I found I was nodding to myself pensively. Another laugh from the same barmaid brought me to my senses. I surveyed my surroundings properly now, having finally achieved something resembling that calm nonchalance that has never come easily to me. The bar was sparsely populated; there were a few groups of the usual mid-twenties rich looking Dulwhich types scattered about the room, either half swallowed in puffy sofas or sitting round tables. Most of them had bottles of wine and, in between dainty sips, were smiling or giggling at each other. Most of them were female and wore polka dot dresses or small stripy sweaters and tiny slipper-shoes. They’re all very fashionable, I said to myself, deciding whether to leave it at that – an observation – or make some judgments. I can never just observe, I thought, only the completely insentient can truly escape judgement: What a load of tripe I began, these people are disgustingly vapid – horrifically vacuous…

It was a favourite diversion of mine to sit somewhere silently admonishing those around me – innocent members of public – for being pitifully and hatefully boring, for depriving themselves of personal flair, for acting in a that empty affable way that ensured not only that no one was ever offended by you but also that you repressed any nuance or interesting facet of your character. I would sit there basking in the warm agony of my own hatred, all the while confident that I was completely blameless of all the vile sins that I thrust upon those about me. This pursuit served me well, the time was passing and I was merry, until I realised the barmaid glancing at me questioningly. At first I was baffled as to why she might be throwing her eyebrows up in my direction, but I soon realised that I was violating a veritable pub commandment: thou must always buy a drink.

I checked my watch again and it was now only five to eight. My friends would be here soon enough, I might as well purchase some alcoholic poison in advance – it was inevitable that I would indulge sooner or later, why not sooner?
“I’ll have a Grolsch please” I half-shouted over to the lonely barmaid, climbing out of the cocoon that I had allowed to engulf me and walking over to the bar.
“That’s £2.80 please,” she said placing my pint on the bar in front of me.
As I handed her a fiver she leaned forward slightly and said “I hope you aren’t being stood up… you’ve been sitting there waiting for ages”.
“I hope I’m not being stood up” I laughed, “But I can’t be sure yet, I was very early you see.”
“Ah” she said “sorry, I get nosey when there’s no one to serve, I get so bored I take risks”
“That’s ok,” I said, feeling compelled and intrigued by her spiritedness, “the truth is, I am always much too early.”
“Well its much better than being late” she gave me a beautiful smile and I stared a her a little to long without saying anything. Her smile faltered and she looked away, she looked down the bar, as if hoping that there was someone else to serve. Realising my mistake, I picked up my pint and walked back to my seat, thanking her again as I left.
Wandering over to my seat I looked up to see my friend Henry walking towards me. I sat we sat down at the same time and he smiled and said “hello” with raised eyebrows. I was just about to reply with some ‘catch-up pleasantry’ or other when our nascent conversation was interrupted by… [I’m stuck, anyone any ideas?]

2006-03-28T04:20:00.001-08:00

Gloves?

Left lying empty in the streets, these gloves –
Limp as weak ladies wobbly legs, limper.

Some abandoned by babies, hurled from the
Pram in gurgling play, mum doesn’t notice
And they roll on, leaving the shed skin of
A tiny hand, lying limp and alone.

But longer, more sinuous quintets do
Leave their digital coats behind too
Suffering, no doubt, from cold and wet hands
In the winter months – but here’s the gist:
Gloves left behind in the gutter, everywhere
This time of year.

Quite a few gloves,
In one day, in one short walk I spotted more
Than three gloves left behind…

I saw a handful of gloves upon the road
And a glove full of hand at end of my arm.

2006-03-28T04:20:00.000-08:00

On Nothing

It was nowhere to be found.
Instead, it lurked everywhere,
Somewhere, anywhere, kitchenware
Abiding in the hem of your shirt like a flea,
Too small to locate, springy and elusive,
Biting you on the wrist just under your watch,
How did it get under there? And while I was asleep!

You can learn to ignore it if you wish
You can go to evening classes – you’re
Taught exercises – yoga of the mind:
Bend all your thoughts the other way, they say,
And drink some of this special yoghurt milk.
It’s darned like a legging – of mock-sock-silk
And weaved in the Alps, by mountain ilk.
“Twaddle, drivel!” I say, “They’ll only bilk
You out of tonnes of dosh and fly-by-night
Before you realise you’re wrong and I’m right”

The lark in the tree is nowhere near me,
If it was I wouldn’t know, I’m no bird
Watcher – nor have I any avian
Erudition – I’m more of a fish’man,
Sifting the waves for my dutiful prey
Parking my boat in the beautiful bay,
Stinking of fish at the end of the day,
Dancing the deck like a goat astray.
My ignorance of rural life could fill
A warehouse, a whorehouse, a mouse house a…
House. I can go on and on and on, I
Can pick my nose like a pro, yes I can

And from my nose did all this spew
Yes that above, the nonsense too.
It must have, I didn’t write it
I found it in my nasal cavities.
Right! Enough of this. I’m off to play the piano.

2006-03-18T05:46:00.000-08:00

Singing in Public

It should be smiled upon – but instead -
If you see anyone singing in the street
“They’re probably mad,” we say – probably?
Certainly mad - bonkers! Ring the council
And complain, I can’t exist in this racket.
But do we need the council? Maybe we

Just need to throw a soft spanner into the
London Underground – the very place
Where the devil of solipsism was born:
“No one else exists, especially not you! Yes
You, the one letting your leg touch mine!
I won’t stand for it!” The standard reaction.

We don’t chat on the tube, let alone sing,
Unless you’re begging. But then you’re
Despised – But I suppose you’re despised
Just as much for begging as for any other
Transgression of the absurdly stringent
Tube etiquette rules and regulations:

Smile at anyone or thing (– or even at nothing)
And you’re a complete nut
Hum along with your personal stereo and of course
You’re a fucking shit face
There’s no question – You’re an utter cunt if you
Make any form of conversation.

Now I’m not denying us our rights.
My personal space? You keep away!
I want that to myself – and I want
To hold firmly on to my right to
Sit in quiet desperation – pretending to read,
Eyes darting about trying to avoid cleavages.

Oh yes – never you mind sonny – no.
I’m no grubby swinger, no hippy, trying to
Force you into bed with my wife – I don’t
Hand out flowers to soldiers in
The hope that one day I’ll have a job
And a car – or a haircut – no!

I’m interested in your safety; I’m as
Concerned for myself as you are yourself
That’s how my empathy works, we’re
Just the same – I’ll say – don’t doubt it.
Your rights are my rights – But you
Get to keep your own, don’t worry.

But – aforementioned rights remaining
Firmly intact – don’t you think we
Might be a little less sulky about the
Whole affair? – What “whole affair”?
Life I tell you! Life! The tube is noisy –
I know you may want to be at home

Sitting in front of Baywatch with hot cup of soup…
…So does everyone else! We’re all Homo sapiens
Here buddy. We all have our needs: food, water,
Baywatch, soup, ringtones, colonic irrigation,
And all the rest of it – Just think of yourself
As a naked – yet civilised – savage, in

A cave (or up a tree, its not important where)
Surrounded by other equally civilised savages,
What would you want the most? – Now don’t
Tell me Heat Magazine, Rollerblades, Brie,
Reebocks, Budweiser, Fatboy Slim, or any of
Those commodities y’know? – More than anything

You’d want to sing out loud - like a bird,
You’d want everyone to hear it too. By
Jove that’s it – that’s what we want – when
A mother sings (or talks with a sing-song
Voice) to her baby – when the football crowds
Chant in (albeit raucous) tones – when a

Drunkard in the street peals out a distorted
Rendition of some pop classic – when you
Sing in the shower – when children on the
Tube shatter all the conventions, singing,
Running about, talking loudly and even –
God forbid – communicating with suited dullards.

2006-03-18T05:39:00.000-08:00

In Vainly Striving for an Epigrammatic Conciseness

I am the wearer of a ridiculous hat.
It is old and green – with dirt? who knows?
Its been years since I bought
It – five maybe. And I wear it everyday,
Putting it on as soon as I wake up.

I’m not wearing it now though
The stereo is loud and my head is unadorned
I'm happening at the computer – going with a poem.
It’s in the present – presently – and the poem is
Loosing its grip by referring to itself – grip on what?

The hat! Yes, indeed, that was the topic
And a fine topic – a conversation point
I like those dashes; I use them because I like them
Especially when Emily Dickinson uses them,
Sometimes at the end of the line like this –
But I’ll bet she never used two – – in a row
You can see why.

Can you blame me for losing track?
It’s just an old hat – the filthy thing
Doesn’t hold my attention for one moment
And I’m just speeding along with this now
I don’t suppose the beers I had earlier are
Helping – “# Skeletons? Yes, but with their
Flesh still around them, and alive #” sings the radio.

But I haven’t got a radio – how on earth?
Oh come on you! Its fictional creativity
You buffoon – Now now… don’t argue with yourself
And on paper too – which might outlive your
Organic existence by a good few years
If you’re lucky

But wait! Hold the press – this isn’t
Even paper.

2006-03-17T04:38:00.000-08:00

New Years Eve 2003

“- and the squashed couchette that dribbles from your throat…attracts a dirty old goat…” he rhymed.
“Don’t forget the rancid stoat…” I added, leaning towards the Dictaphone in his hand, “yeah! The stoat, that sails in a boat… round the fairytale moat…” I said, before hesitating.
“If you’re not careful you’ll be demoted”, Adrian continued, holding the Dictaphone right up close to his mouth, “we’ll rip those stripes right off your coat, from your current position down to a private, and you couldn’t ever skive it, you signed the five year contract maaan!” he sneered to a stop.
The Dictaphone clicked as Adrian turned it off. Our throats were sore as we’d been freestyling into Adrian’s Dictaphone for at least twenty minutes without a break. It was New Years Eve and we had decided to spend it in The Hobgoblin, which is the nearest pub to my house. In the summer its vast garden served us well but we soon realised that in the cold of winter, we would have to escape the elements inside. This is just what we were doing, much to our distaste. For the new years celebrations the pub had a DJ and those irritating coloured disco lights flashing about the empty dance floor. The music was excruciatingly loud. So loud, I thought, that the DJ must have given up trying to attract people to the dance floor. He was now just punishing us because we had failed to do so.
“We probably won’t be able to hear a thing of that,” I shouted into Adrian’s ear over the colossal din and pointing at the Dictaphone, “the music is way too loud”.
He shrugged and then raised an eyebrow ironically. He was just about to shout something into my ear when Dave and Rachel arrived back from the bar with four shots of whiskey.
“Here we go lads,” screamed Dave in an exaggerated cockney accent “all together now.” The four of us (Adrian, Dave, Rachel, and me) each imbibed a small quantity of poison, and each spluttered or hissed according to the ferocity with which we felt our insides were being destroyed and our brains melted.
“Right – what now then?!” Dave shouted at the other three of us, just about reaching the necessary high decibel scream that was required to supersede the musical racket and reach our ears, “This is horrid! Do you reckon we could brave the cold and sit outside?!”
There seemed to be some drunken consensus: a bit of nodding, Adrian put his hat on, Rachel picked up her hand bag, so Dave led the way and we strode out into the harsh, cold, on-the-cusp-of-January air. The sudden stillness, emptiness and relative quiet of the deserted pub garden allowed me to realise how drunk I was. Our ears hissed.

We had been suffering the loud, smoky interior for a number of hours now. Our desperate attempts to enliven this notoriously anti-climatic pseudo-event came in two categories: alcohol and nonsense. Shouting improvised nonsense-rhymes into Adrian’s Dictaphone had been punctuated only by throat-searing shots of refined hedonism. It was now at least ten o’clock, not very long before we were to be blessed with a new year.
“Shall we get a kebab?” suggested Dave.
“Uuuh… I dunno,” I mumbled, shrugging and the beginning to shiver.
We all looked around at each other searchingly and the dull glisten of apathetic intoxication was consistently reflected back by each pair of eyes.
“Well I wouldn’t mind some chips,” said Rachel smiling sardonically, “I suppose its something to do”
“Ok then – shall we all go?” inquired Dave.
I shook my head and looked at Adrian to see what he thought.
“William and I will stay here!” he said in his mock-heroic voice that he sometime puts on when there is little else happening.
“Yeah, we’ll wait here” I nodded.
The couple jumped up rubbing their hands together and hunching their shoulders inwards as people do in the cold, and shuffled off to the kebab house down the road.

“Soooo… William” said Adrian, as soon as we were alone, pronouncing my name rhythmically in his unusual American accent, “what shall we do before this year is in the past?”
“We could go on an adventure,” I said pathetically, shaking my head at the emptiness of my own words.
“We could just go for a walk down some of these streets,” Adrian suggested, waving his hand in the direction of Brockwell Court.
“I suppose so” I said, tracing a route in my mind through the local streets. “But wouldn’t that be boring?” I asked.
Adrian lifted his hands mock-despairingly, “you never know” he shrugged “it could be better than just sitting here”.
“What about the other two?”
“Let’s just run round the block… we’ll be back before they are.”

We ran across the road and I began to feel more excited. Running when I’m drunk is always quite exciting; the edge of my vision blurs and it seems as it gives the impression that I am running extremely fast. We slowed to a brisk walk and entered the Brockwell Court estate. Adrian started singing. Well it was really half singing, half humming. In time with our steps he was repeating a jazz-like phrase, slightly different every time. Around the side of the flats we were skirting, adjacent the large cylindrical bins, there was an old sofa left there to rot. On a whim I jumped on it and climbed up and over the wall it was resting against. The wall was about six foot high. Without a word from either of us Adrian followed suit. We were now in the next estate, I forget its name. We were walking along a grassy alley passing windows in which we could see people celebrating New Years Eve in their living rooms. Adrian was still trumpeting along and I joined in with a simple bass riff. Our alcoholic confidence increased and we began to sing louder. People noticed us and looked up as we passed their windows. First, an old couple that looked like they were just sitting in silence, waiting for something to happen. We obviously weren’t what they were waiting for – they scowled vehemently at us. Then, a Hispanic looking couple that were cooking a meal together looked up as we sang passed their window. The woman, at first, looked shocked but I detected a favourable hue in her surprise and I stopped singing for a moment to shout “Happy New Year” through the window at her. As we walked on swiftly both moved towards the window and called “Happy New Year!” after us.

A minute later, still walking down the alley, we came upon a metal frame fire escape and, again without a word, Adrian began to ascend the steps. Six floors up we reached the top and beheld a beautiful view. The sky of London was alight with fireworks. We stood and watched the sky for a minute before Adrian began rummaging in his pockets. “Here it is,” he mumbled, producing the Dictaphone. Affecting a ridiculous air of importance he held the machine up to his mouth and started singing.

“Ahh den der-tis sen der dih hoss….
Ahh den der-tis sen der dih haaa ho hosen…
Ooh hoo er haa… en-der-dih hoss
Ahh den der-tis sen der dih hoss….”

I knew the song and joined in at the chorus:

“Otis – air-dees – er-ti-hos…
Otis – air-dees – er-ti-hos…
Otis – air-dih hees – er-ti-hos…
Arken Der-ti-hos!”

The song we were singing was by an insane French progressive jazz-rock band called Magma. They had invented their own language called Kobaia and we were, apparently, singing in it. We hadn’t the fogiest what we were singing – all we knew was that it was a tribute to Otis Reading. We both loved the song and became lost in our roof top rendition of it. The fireworks went on beautifully in the distance. At a certain point when it seemed to feel right, we slowed to a stop, ending the song with a duet of high pitched wailing (a faithful imitation, I might add). Turning off the machine and putting it away, Adrian turned to me with a genuine smile, “well what shall we do now?”
“More things!” I said with excitement, setting off back down the fire escape.

Over a couple more walls and across a road and we entered a very different state. It looked a lot more private and perhaps even a little posh. A driveway led us round the large red brick building into a sort of large quad containing a small ornamental garden. It was completely silent and we could go no further. We stood for a moment and looked about at the little garden.
“Look at this” I hissed, walking over to a bicycle that hadn’t been chained up, “its just leaning here!”
“Shall we have a ride round on it?” asked Adrian.
My future conscience kicked in. We’ll never return this if we go for a ride on it, I thought, we’ll end up throwing it in a bush half a mile away most likely.
“No… I – I don’t think we’ll ever return it will we?” I looked Adrian in the eye, “in the state we’re in…”
“No, I guess you’re right” he nodded, sighing.
“Well lets move on,” I proposed, as if we now had some concrete agenda.
“Indeed” he muttered, with his usual whimsical drawl.

We walked back in the direction of the pub, back in the direction of my house. Neither of us had a mobile phone nor any timekeeping equipment.
“I suppose its now 2004” I announced.
“Yes well happy new year… I suppose” he replied, not forgetting to raise his customary ironic eyebrow.
We arrived at the pub but the garden was empty and people were being told to leave.
“I wonder what happened to Dave and Rachel?” I thought aloud.
“I’m sure they’re doing fine someplace,” he squawked, accentuating his accent deliberately (but purposelessly).
“Yeah…” I looked around at the drunken stragglers in the street and realised we had probably been away from the pub for hours. It was the singing on the fire escape that did it. We were too drunk to notice time slipping away. What had begun, as ‘a run round the block’ had actually become, in some oblique manner, an adventure. But it was not to end here. There was to be a final flourish.

Without discussing it, Adrian and I had begun to wander in the direction of my house. It was not more than a hundred metres from the pub. I could tell we were both walking slowly on purpose, prolonging the adventure, unwilling to have it end – as it certainly would on entering my house. Within about 20 metres of my house I became desperate for some one last taste of drunken revelry and jumped out of my slovenly stupor: I leap into the middle of the road. It was currently empty and I could hear no cars approaching so I lay down right in the centre of the road. As soon as I found myself resting comfortably, I wondered what foolish purpose this was supposed to serve. I was just about to get up and give in – ending the adventure – when I heard a chorus of cries. A looked up from my supine position to see a group of six young girls, no older than seventeen, running towards me. They were all heavily made up and dressed in short skirts and tiny low cut tops. Running was clearly difficult for them as they were all wearing stupendously high heels, and they were all, of course, ludicrously juiced. Their collective scent preceded them, carried by the gentle breeze, and I inhaled a mixture of gut wrenchingly strong perfume and the somewhat preferable reek of neat vodka. They were now in a single file line and the leading girl was within feet of me. Suddenly frightened I tensed up a little and held my head with my hands. The girls proceeded to jump over me. Some cleared me completely and some placed a cursory foot on my abdomen during their flight, without any weight. Skilfully done, I thought, for someone so drunk. Relaxing a little, I realised that I was in little danger. The last girl was lagging a little behind and I remained lying in the road, giving her time to have her go. She was running on socks, carrying her high heels in her hands. I caught a glimpse of her face and was immediately aware the degree to which she had indulged this evening. Before I had time to think any further, she leapt into the air landing on one foot with her full weight on my abdomen, then leaping off and staggering away to join her screaming sisters. This girl had just compressed my stomach with such violent suddenness, such frightening unexpectedness, that I was left coughing and spluttering in the road. I managed to get up and join Adrian back on the pavement and exchange a brief glance with him. We were both shaking our heads in cheerful bemusement.

2006-03-16T04:50:00.000-08:00

Unravel

Maurice Ravel; piano master whose early works seem scarcely less mature than those of his maturity; shavings of Parmigiano-reggiano were caught in his beard; It is the “tree moss” of the poets and Shakespeare's “idle moss,” and in the past it was used as a remedy for whooping cough, catarrh, epilepsy, and dropsy, also as an astringent, a tonic, and a diuretic, it was first described in 300 BC as a hair-growth stimulant; Greek voyager Pytheus sailed around Britain and discovered a place he named Thule (possibly the Shetland Islands, Iceland, or Norway), which for centuries was considered the end of the earth; I remember digging a whole in the garden and seriously believing that if I put the elbow grease in I would reach Australia; I could never quite pronounce the word ‘Vaseline’; chapped lips in the winter are a pleasure to crack, I smile as hard as I can in the mornings to crack the sides, and then immediately regret it; while earthquakes have inspired dread and superstitious awe since ancient times, little was understood about them until the emergence of seismology at the beginning of the 20th century; Steveland Judkins, a blind child prodigy produced a steady stream of classic hit songs, but Stevie Wonder (as he became) was much more than a freakish prepubescent imitation of Ray Charles, as audiences discovered when he demonstrated his prowess with piano, organ, harmonica, and drums; I had been writing under a pseudonym for years, until one day my house was burgled and it was stolen, now I have to be content with writing under a desk lamp; witticisms may not be my strong point; for many prehistoric tribes, the traditional test of manhood was the lifting of a special rock... such manhood stones, some with the name of the first lifter incised, exist in Greece and in Scottish castles; among the simplest instruments are those that European folk cultures share with many tribal cultures throughout the world: rattles, flutes, the bull-roarer, bone whistles, and long wooden trumpets, such as the Swiss alpenhorn; as “they” say ‘every singer starts out singing other peoples songs’ and I suppose eventually you come into your own, having understood the ineffable essence of composition, and weren’t the earliest writers writing what we sometimes refer to as ‘songs’?; Gilgamesh, who had returned to Uruk, rejected the marriage proposal of Ishtar, the goddess of love, and then, with Enkidu's aid, killed the divine bull that she had sent to destroy him; I want to convince myself that I’m not too much of a plagiarist – not too much of an idea-stealer; the fish monger had a hard time convincing Mrs Millenthrop to take home a Haddock as she was there was “something fishy about those spots on its shoulder”; before I go any further I should wash my hands repeatedly and say a thousand Hail Mary’s; despite his name, Pope Urban IV (who reigned 1261–64), wasn’t a proto-gangster-pimp, exhibiting the finest in Medieval bling, and pimping his nuns like a forward thinking antediluvian thug, instead he freed the Kingdom of Sicily, a papal fief, from Hohenstaufen domination and restored papal influence in Italy; an exercise in unfree-association.

2006-03-10T06:13:00.000-08:00

‘As Mag sat with the kid in her lap and began to read from a book, life in the forest...

"The weasel and his cousins, the mink, the fisher, and the marten, are lithe, fast, savage creatures. They are meat eaters, and are in continuous, bloodthirsty competition for the..."

then the beautiful child was asleep and the moon was full.’
From Tales of Ordinary Madness by Charles Bukowski.

2006-03-10T03:08:00.000-08:00

Lipogram

I know a man who said “Drop your slacks and fling your bits about all you want, you’ll only ruin your days. Publicans and drunkards will similarly gawk, watching your phallus (and you with it) drop down into ignominy… humiliation, infamy. Corruption of your status will follow; disdain from all around you.” A judicious oration without doubt. But a thing was missing. But which thing do I talk of? Do you know? It is a common part of communication. All habitually apply it to manuscript. Without it I could avoid this uncanny quality of contact. Do you know now?

2006-03-10T03:05:00.000-08:00

The party was thronging and I was drunk. I was wandering about in a sea of familiar faces. Squeezing past people, under peoples arms, over their feet, round chairs and so on. The house was packed. Even the stairs, there was a person sitting on nearly every step. Everyone was talking and laughing and the music was pumping away not so quietly as to allow easy thought when you weren’t talking. It was my house and I knew most of the guests. Some better than others, but in my drunken state (which most of them probably shared) I said hello warmly to everyone. It wasn’t false warmth. It was my real burning cheeks, my hot stinging throat (fresh from the vodka), and my happy wobbling gait. I was warm inside. I shook everyone’s hands as I stumbled through. As I passed some people I engaged in fleeting conversations or joined in on ones that were already going. Sometimes I think I would just amble off in the middle of a sentence (theirs or mine) or answer the question a previous person had asked me in the face of the next person. If there was confusion it was laughed off or out. I was drunk and so was everyone else for all I knew.
I was making my way through the party to get to my room. It was on the top floor. There was no one in it. I had locked it. The party was only to be downstairs. As I finally reached the top of the stairs I heard someone calling my name. I could hear them downstairs, laughing and spluttering and calling my name. It didn’t sound like an emergency. It sounded like someone had said something funny, or someone had donned a silly hat, or perhaps there were a couple of girls snogging – and whoever was shouting wanted me to come and see, I don’t know. But I was in need of some quiet. It wasn’t that I was feeling ill or exhausted, or even slightly nervous as I sometimes get when surrounded by so much stimuli – no – I had had a thought and I wanted to solidify it. That needed quiet.
As I approached my door, leaving the stairs behind, I no longer heard my name being called. The bubbling noises downstairs rumbled under my feet as I unlocked my room and stole in. Shutting the door behind me I was plunged into a murky hush. The party was a background hum and my thoughts could be heard again. I turned the desk lamp on and fell into the chair. Pushing aside some university work I located a pen and grabbed an old envelope from the wastepaper bin. It would do, I thought, a drunkard can write on a surface befitting his bedraggled comportment. My tongue out to the side, with a shiny red nose (probably), and my cheap biro scratching at the old scrap of brown paper, in between the shrivelled stamp and the address, I wrote:

This house party is like an amorphous anemone. Tangled bright and varied colours, interconnected tentacles that sway in the moonstruck ebb of drunkenness. You can traverse the multitudes like a worm or a snake, or a wriggling child in a sleeping bag. You can zigzag through the lines of vision, the airwaves of communication; you can even burst through the sensuous touches of a couple in half-embrace, tracing your path in advance with your wielded sword fist so they know that’s the way you’re going and there’s nothing that will stop you. Except perhaps a punch in the face –
There are quiet ones on the periphery, sitting watching the surging swarm of the party nucleus. Some of these quiet ones are heavy drinkers, quietly concentrating on their large glass of gin (the bottle half hidden behind one of their legs), only speaking when spoken to – and monosyllabically. Some of the peripherals are nervous teetotal onlookers, eager to dive into the swarm, but hesitant and afraid. Wide eyes like a lonely child. I’m always glad when they find each other to talk to or pluck up the courage and swathe themselves in drunkards. Lonely eyes have no place in the lap of hedonism; an environment of great ease, comfort and blur. Still others seated round the edge of the party are just too drunk, they’ve had their fill of luxury. Perhaps their stomachs are cloying, or their heads are spinning like whirligigs of despair, like interminable eye-fatiguing Catherine wheels…
The nucleus is bursting and erupting like Jupiter. Splashes of Sangria, a spray of scrumpy from a mouth, brandished brandy, launched liquor, flung framboise, chucked chartreuse… Oh the trickles of tequila, the oozing ouzo… y’know?

But who am I to glamorise alcohol? It is a complex cycle, fast-paced and difficult to break out of. But before I want to leave, the cycle is thrilling. Like the child learning to ride a bike I stay on, not knowing how difficult it is to stop, not realising that I don’t know how – and then blamo! we ride into a wall…the childhood memory of a bike, the alcohol, and I. Now someone is carrying me up the stairs but it seems like it is happening to someone else. It is experienced from a distance, someone far away is shouting my words for me and I can’t quite hear them. I am shouting inanities, blasphemies, nonsense, proposals of love, I’m singing, I’m dancing and writhing inside but really – in truth – I’m vomiting in a toilet. On my knees on the urine-damp bathroom linoleum, hands clasped unknowingly (but out of necessity) on the equally piss splattered seat. My eyes have stopped sending signals to my brain. My only thought is a sore throat, I can’t yet comprehend regret or anything so advanced. I have regressed.

2006-02-21T02:40:00.000-08:00

I was waiting at the bus stop on Brixton Water Lane for a number 3 when I noticed two men standing near me. They were waiting for a bus together, standing near each other, whispering and giggling. They were just like schoolgirls. At first I paid little attention to them; immature men are no rarity. However, my attention was solicited by extraordinary regular interruption to this manner: every minute or so the silly sniggering would cease, they would turn away from each other slightly and stare with a stern face at the pavement or hold their hands over their eyes as if with a headache. These calm interludes would last only a few seconds and then one of them would usually poke the other and mumble something apparently hilarious. I thought perhaps they were hangover and these bouts of silliness were the fatigued laughs of one who remembers the outrageous exploits of the night before. That would explain the serene intermissions: headaches and nausea are certainly a common hindrance when one wants the party to continue the morning after. But the sheer mania, the excessively jubilant, almost unnatural, bursts of uncontrollable giggling suggested something more than just a happy hangover. I suspected that they were under the influence of mind-altering drug, perhaps mushrooms. I am however, hopelessly ignorant in this field having had very few experiences myself so I shall speculate no further, leaving the description at that: it seemed to me more than just a hangover.

The bus arrived and I boarded it followed by these two men. I took a seat upstairs and opened my book and I was soon lost within its pages. Not five minutes could have passed before I was disturbed by the voice of an African woman. She was addressing the seated multitudes, a bus packed with people. I could not see her. She was downstairs but her voices carried upstairs clearly.
“Good morning Ladies and Gentleman, I’m talking to you on behalf of Jesus Christ. I’ve come here to tell you how your sins can be alleviated. I have come here today to tell you that you must have a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ…” The woman continued in this manner.

One of the men who I had scrutinised at the bus stop was in a seat right next to the stairs. As the African voice downstairs was droning on about ‘the Lord’, ‘redemption of sins’ and so forth, this man half stood up, leaned over the stairwell and shouted “We don’t want to know!” in a heavy French accent and sat back down with a grunt of self-satisfaction. The preachers voice continued without the slightest pause or change of tone, as nothing had happened. On noticing this, the Frenchman sighed heavily, expressing great irritation and leaned over again to shout “We’re not Christians! We don’t want to know!” At this, his friend who had sniggered with him at the bus stop began to snigger again. This provoked a sparse wave of sniggering throughout the bus. The Frenchman joined in with another smug guttural emission. But still the sermonic tones floated up clear and unencumbered. I was now unable to read my book. I shut it and observed the following with a mixture of mild irritation and intrigue.

The Frenchman engaged in some melodramatic huffing and puffing and then repeated his attempts at silencing the preacher with the same heckles as before “We’re not Christians! We don’t want to know! … We don’t want to know!” His entreaties went completely unheeded. Those that had formerly sniggered with him on the top deck were beginning to lose interest in the frantic Frenchman and settle down under the auspices of their new self-appointed priest. Refusing to become a compliant member of her congregation, the Frenchman rallied his inner troops and let fly a further volley of ammunition. “Come on… leave us in peace!” he whined, “We don’t want to hear what you have to say!” I marvelled at his apparently uninhibited ability to speak for the whole top deck of the bus: it was always ‘we are not Christians’ or ‘we don’t want to hear it’. He continued shouting for some time and the African voice downstairs remained astonishingly unfazed by it. It was almost as if it were just a recording of some preaching. The thought crossed my mind that it might actually be so. For all we knew it could be, it didn’t look to me as if the Frenchman could actually see his antagonist: whenever he leaned over to hurl abuse down the stairwell his eyes didn’t appear to be trained on anything in particular.

Eventually the exhausted Frenchman appeared to give up. The oration downstairs was calmly persisting. I joined many of my fellow passengers in turning to watch the Frenchman, we were all curious as to his next move. Had he given up? Would he sit quietly and relent? He hunched his back and sat with his legs twisted uncomfortably like a sulking schoolboy.
“The lords is part of your life whether you know it or not,” continued the voice, “He is loving you always. Let Him into your life and love him in return. Your reward shall be eternal.” The voice paused for a short while and the Frenchman wriggled out of his unwieldy position and jumped up to lean over the stairwell and shout something. I saw his lips open, I saw him inhaling, planning his abuse. But the voice started again, apparently before he had thought of anything to say:
“Now ladies and gentleman I want to ask you some questions.” she began again “Who controls your life?”
“Myself!” the Frenchman barked.
“Who controls the devil?” said the voice, still in perfectly untrammelled tone.
“I do!” he screamed, daftly. A few laughs were heard scattered about the top deck.
“Who controls the world?”
“Nature!” he offered at a less frantic pitch.
“Do you want to go to heaven?”
“No!” he hollered loud and steady, pleased with his chance to retort to such inane questions.
“Do you want to go to hell?” asked the voice, and this time I thought I detected a more inquisitive quality in her voice.
“Yes!” He spat, beaming at his own rebellion.
After a pause the voice warned almost pleadingly “But hell is eternal damnation… fire burns your flesh and guilt engulfs your mind… forever” there was pity in her voice. Now, of course, I knew it was not a recording. The woman downstairs was just very good at ignoring hecklers. He had finally got to her though.
“I don’t care,” he said quite softly, in a voice that seemed really not to care. “I’m an atheist” he boomed proudly, “ none of that bullshit is going to happen to me!”
“God is willing to forgive non-believers” the voice resumed its former insuperable manner and finished what she had, apparently, written down or prepared to say originally “In the name of the father…”

The Frenchman was now sitting contentedly with his arms crossed, smiling and nodding mockingly at the preacher’s words. Concluding her lecture, the priest of this rolling church said “thank you very much everyone and I will see you again soon my friend”. It was clear that she meant the Frenchman. Accordingly, he waved his hand in a dismissive manner and mumbled “Yeah yeah yeah…”

2006-02-19T06:59:00.000-08:00

Thought One

A man enters a room through a door. A chair and table are the only furnishings in this otherwise empty room. A solitary light bulb, unornamented, hangs from the ceiling, lighting the room. He pauses after a few steps and turns hesitantly back towards the door. He reaches out and pushed the door. It swings shut. A sign is made visible on the door. It says ‘You have entered the minds of others.’ The man appears to read it. He shrugs and walks over to the table and chair. His right hand carelessly strokes the tabletop and his left hand clasps the backrest of the chair. His eyes roam the room but swiftly return to its only inhabitants – the table and chair. He shrugs again and sits down on the chair placing his hands neatly on the table in front of him. A few seconds pass in which no movement is visible in the room – except the slightest twitching of his left eyebrow. He pulls a face. It is an inscrutable grimace that might denote boredom. Lowering his head he lifts his hands to his face and props himself up with his elbows resting on the table. He appears to be thinking.

Suddenly he leaps up from his seated position and grabs the chair, throwing his forcefully against the wall. It beaks into a number of pieces with a loud smashing sound. Not stopping for a moment the man recovers what remains of the chair and hurls it yet again at the wall. This time the animation and vigour is perceptible in his movements, perhaps a certain enjoyment. His face remains stern and unwavering. He gathers the various bits and pieces that used to form a chair and places them in the corner in a neat pile. Walking to the centre of the room he stands with his hands on his hips and appears to contemplate the table. Only two seconds pass before he leaps forward athletically and lands with both feet on the table. He immediately begins jumping up and down with his feet together, effecting a violent assault on the main structure of the table. Loud creaks prelude the abrupt snapping of the surface on which he is bouncing. The man falls with the table as it snaps and collapses landing in a heap with half the table on either side of him. Apparently unharmed, he gives a sigh, possibly of relief, and springs to his feet.

The two halves of the ta

2006-02-16T03:49:00.000-08:00

Sherlock Holmes was not what I expected. He’s addicted to cocaine. He’s as haughty and vain as can be, treating Watson like a fool when Watson is really far from a fool. But my biggest surprise came when, Watson being exhausted, Holmes takes up his violin and says “Look here, Watson; you look regularly done. Lie down there on the sofa and see if I can put you to sleep.” He then proceeds to play Watson into a marvellously comforting slumber. What an extraordinary man.

2006-02-16T03:47:00.000-08:00

The Big Issue seller was short and fat like a baby pigeon, if you’ve ever seen one. Squab is the word. He had hesitant black curls in a ring around a gaping bald patch. In a forlornly weathered woolly jumper he stood at ease, for it fitted him so well. His torso and abdomen gelled together in one ovoid mass. With gnarled trainers and elderly trousers he stepped back and forth to keep the blood flowing. His face presented a pitiful smile. One got the feeling he was good-natured but at the same time forcing his smile. This impression was backed up by his spiel. At frequent Intervals he would throw an empty handed arm in the air and lift the splayed magazines slightly in the other hand. His stance thus prepared, he would summon the booming roar “Plee-sss buy a copy” followed usually by some mumbling “what a great read…” to a particular pedestrian in close quarters, or some such unconvincing inveiglement.
As I sat nearby watching him at work he gradually became more desperate. His “pleee-ss!” became more wretched and pathetic and his eyebrows lifted and drooped down on either side of his face like a sad cartoon character. He started bellowing, “you get to help the homeless and it’s a marvellous read!” But as his desperation became more and more theatrical, his presence became more embarrassing. Part of me sorely pitied him and wanted to buy a copy of his magazine but another part of me just wanted to get up and leave the area.
I stayed however, only to witness something at once hilarious and appalling. His painfully forced smile faltered momentarily as a dreadful thought appeared to cross his mind. Then, after sucking up enough air to furnish his next aural barrage, he let it rip: “You buy the magazine, I get money and I get my heroin. Then we’re all happy!”

2006-02-16T03:42:00.000-08:00

Dunlop: Chapter I

Hello. I am a fictional creation. As yet I have no name. This line of text embodies the entire history of my existence. One might say I was just born. Where am I? I am on this very page. My name is Dunlop. It just came to me. I do not object to this name. I suppose I cannot object to it. That is, not unless my creator makes it so. He might have me do, think or feel anything for I am fictional and that is his prerogative.

I wonder where you are at this moment. You, the reader of this text. The reader of my words; words coming from my as yet un-described mouth. I have only one definite feature so far, my name. I am quite excited about my existence. It is just coming into fruition now. What allows me to be excited? Me, a mere name on a page, an insignificant constituent of reality, where are my thoughts? But then, where are yours? In your head? That is as much a guess as to say that my thoughts are in the page. Open a brain and rummage around as much as you want, you wont find any thoughts. The same goes for this page. But who is to say what exists? Well, my creator for one. He’s deciding what exists. I am a ferret. A talking ferret with soft white fur. Does this surprise you? I would imagine not.

You could be anywhere. You might be reading this in a roof garden in New York, United states. You might be sat on the toilet, you might be in a plane flying over Bulgaria, or you may well be bouncing on a trampoline trying to read this sentence, its all possible. I am a talking ferret. My name is Dunlop because I was found in a tire. Who was it that found me? It has been decided not to divulge this piece of information. You and I will never know whom it was that found me in that fateful tire and dubbed me Dunlop. Probably the first word they saw after picking up my tiny form and cradling me. Do you realise that you can stop reading at any time? You can thrust this paper aside, go off and do something else; you might even go to the pub for a pint. I am told this is an enjoyable pastime for many humans. I’m not sure who told me this or when it was but I have little choice about what I say. It just seems to arrive at my lips. I would guess that my creator would prefer you to read on.

Something should probably happen soon, something a little more tangible than ramblings and musings of a fictional ferret. It appears I am now going to tell a story. The story of my life. Not from the beginning though. I shall begin it sometime soon after that fateful day when I was discovered curled up in a tire. Curled up eh? That’s a new detail; where did that come from? Perhaps I was getting into the storytelling mood and I added that myself. Perhaps not. So I was in a turnip field. That is where I shall begin. I was out sniffing for lunch. Sniffing the air to see what it had to say to me, to see what it might tell me about life. Make a sandwich. Do you feel like one? Or perhaps you are not in the vicinity of sandwich making equipment or ingredients. Perhaps you are in the park; maybe you’re even trying to read these words while cycling, though I doubt it. But I suppose you could be on a tandem, you could be the second person and so not be required to steer and be alert. If only there was a tandem designed to accommodate the anatomy of a ferret, I would love to sit at the back and read while cycling. A splendid idea. (I bet you’re pretty spooked if you’re reading this for the first time and you are in fact sitting on the second seat of a tandem!)

Goodness me, I have gone off the point completely. The whole idea that someone might read this just intrigues me. It’s strange to think of the irreversible direction of my communication. I mean, its all one way, you can’t reply. Well, not soon enough to have me respond on this page. You might write to me. But really I am trapped in this page, no further existence has been granted me. I can’t have an exchange with you. But at the same time, I am talking to you (at you perhaps). But you probably knew all that already. I’ll try and stop being so tedious. Here we go I’ll start again. Dunlop, that’s my name. I’m a ferret and I was found in a tire. I first became aware of myself in a field of turnips. At this point my only historical residue was my name and the raw fact that I was found in a tire. Roaming about in this turnip field, as I said, I was sniffing the air. The air told me numerous things that would have been undetectable to the human nose. Rain was on its way, there was a field of sitting cows nearby, and the barn next to my field was uninhabited. I learned much more from the air at the time but something tells me not everything memorable is worth remembering.

2006-02-07T03:56:00.000-08:00

Red

Post my letter in the dark
Written at night
Can’t leave ‘til morning
Out onto street:

My lucubration must
Be dispatched.

Towards the post box in empty street at night
No one else out
Few cars on the road
Motionless and dark

Beneath street lamps
My shadow appears
And stretches out in front
As I move onwards

Street lamps too far apart
Unavoidably plunged into
Darkness at intervals

Sound makes me flinch
My own footsteps

Post box swathed in darkness
In the darkest region
Only ever a silhouette

As I approach
Nerves tighten
Surge faster a few steps
Piercing silence

Thrust the letter into mouth
Muted clunk signals
The digestion of my communication in the bowels

Gloom is so pervasive in this wretched spot
Red is but a guess

This stygian brute
Stock-still for every visit
Swallows my epistles without
A gulp of thanks

The deed is done
I turn and flee
The moment my back is turned my
Mind conjures wild animism:
The sinister pillar reveals
Luminescent white teeth and glowing red eyes
Sprouts legs and creeps silently after

Never look back –
Like a child in bed
Too afraid to lower the
Sheets covering eyes
And behold what might be

Whistling and humming
To keep myself together
Stride swift and steady back home.

2006-02-07T03:48:00.000-08:00

I’m so desperate I’d lay the table.

My stiff eye encrusted with salty sleep focuses watery-vague on the screen in front of me and that itch on my back needs scratching but I’m not allowed to stop typing so I keep my head straight like Winston in 1984 who feared the glare of the telescreen would decipher his thoughts by the expression on his face but that itch has gone now so I can rest easy sitting in my room unwatched by anyone/thing with the dulcet tones of a radio humming behind me in the background of my mental-Being which spans throughout the house like a spiders web so I can sense any movement in any room from the slightest vibrations but this is not my only existence as I have my mind set aside in a little jar by the door which leads to the termination of this tiresome punctuation famine. Here we are. Its good to be back, comma, a love thee, I, really, really, love, thee, and, not forgetting you. My full stop. Always waiting for me to finish. Waiting for me after work. You. There’s also: the colon: my friend: I don’t see you often but when I do it’s a good time. Your brother the semicolon is not so close to me; I often feel uncomfortable in his presence; I never quite know what he’s doing and sometimes he won’t leave when you want him to. The question mark comes to some of my parties but doesn’t tend to be problematic; he never seems to have the answer though does he? I suppose that’s not his job. If I ever write anything this bad again, I’m going to throw my self off the top deck of a moving bus! Oh there’s the exclamation mark, only comes round when I’m shouting. I better go and check the timetable on the bus stop; the busses only come once or twice an hour in this horrid town.

2006-02-02T05:33:00.000-08:00

They were very trendy but most people just went so they could say they had been. It was rather uncomfortable. The seats were fine, but wearing a blindfold in a concert hall full of other blindfolded people is quite strange. Gultensbien was an eccentric though, he refused to play the piano if he was even one person peeking past their blindfolds: he’d walk off stage and not come back that night. But really, everyone knew this, and having paid £60 for tickets, there were seldom any transgressors. So seldom in fact that Gultensbien became quite confident that none of his fans would ever see him perform. He began coming on stage in his dressing gown and slippers. What did it matter what he wore? That was the whole point: no visuals, the audience were not to be drawn away from the sound of the piano by some florid wallpaper, ornate rafters, or the appearance of the pianist. Eventually he began coming on stage naked. When he was ill he didn’t cancel a show he just sent his nine-year-old daughter on stage and the audience thought they were hearing some of Gultensbien’s new avant-garde compositions. She never touched the piano outside that hall; she wasn’ta pianist at any stretch of the imagination. But £60 pounds for a ticket stayed the price. Gultensbien would treat her to some ice cream afterwards. She did it more and more often. Soon Gultensbien was only doing one night a week himself. She wasn’t the least bit stage-frightened either, ears are nothing like eyes. No one could see her.

2006-02-01T06:33:00.000-08:00

A Day in My Life

I wake to the naff tinny jazz imitation tune blasting out always slightly too loud from my phone as the little screen lights up with the words “Do Achilles Exercises You Lazy Turd!” Its 9:45am. I levy the forces, enlist all my muscles and haul my mass up into a sitting position. Five minutes of strange and tedious toe wriggling exercises follow by which time my brain has had some time to think over the day ahead. As I get dressed I turn the computer on and encourage it to play me a random selection of music from my digital collection. Collecting my books and papers together I stuff them all in my backpack and go downstairs to make the porridge. Four minutes and twenty seconds as the microwave hums I lean forward against the worktop to stretch my calf muscles, another physiotherapeutic necessity. The microwave bleats and I grab my steaming porridge and run upstairs where my music warbles from the little laptop speakers. I eat in front of the laptop, looking things up on my digital Britannica (the closest thing I have to the internet), writing things like this, perusing my music and just generally computing. This lasts an hour or sometimes much less. Then I’m out of the house and walking up the hill, beatboxing quietly to myself, since my ipod broke. Twenty minutes up hill and I arrive at the prodigious Hartley Library.

My first port of call is usually the computer rooms to check and reply to my emails and perhaps post a blog. An hour slips past much too fast and I begin to feel guilty as there important work to be done. Logging off I make my way up to the fourth floor to the Turner Sims reading room where the English literature is housed. I usually sit by Henry James though sometimes I sit near Hemingway if the sun is flooding in the window nicely. I begin work and my head is down for an hour or so before my first break. I give myself twenty minutes break every hour. In my breaks I usually sit on the floor in the foyer with Ashley who is working somewhere nearby (often in the German literature section, he likes to sit by Brecht or Rilke). I Ashley is not around or we somehow fail to synchronise our breaks then I leave the library and cross the road to the student shop where I abuse their negligence and stand for the full twenty minutes reading a skateboarding magazine which I have no intention of buying. If the magazines are all familiar I return to the library and roam the Russian literature shelves, popping into books about Gogol or Tolstoy and glancing at quotes or illustrations; or perhaps the literary theory isles, or the French literature section, whatever. It strikes me that I never ever see anyone else doing this. There are hundreds of thousands of books at our disposal; we can even take them home if we want! But the only people I see in amongst the book are scanning the Dewey codes on the spines of the books, looking for a book they are obliged to read for their course, a scrap of paper in their hand with their desired code.

Anyway I work like this, taking breaks at regular intervals, eating lunch somewhere in there, until I’m so fatigued as to struggle to discern the words in front of me. It’s probably about six o’clock by then. On my way out I usually pop into a computer room and have one last taste of the Internet. I walk down the hill beat boxing much louder than I dared on the way. Its something about working all day in the library, when I come out I feel so energised, I want to run, jump and dance. One the way home I go to the newsagent and buy a Starbar, my favourite peanut and caramel filled chocolate confection. When I arrive home Andy is usually in the kitchen cooking something and a glorious smell arrests my nose on the threshold. I join him in the kitchen and try my best to emulate his splendid aromatic creations. The radio on BBC 6 we sit and eat together.

As the kettle boils for his after dinner tea Andy informs me that he has to go upstairs and do some more work. Off he goes and I do a bit of washing up before going up stairs myself. Depending on how I feel at this point I either read a book or an old newspaper (I never manage to read the paper the day I buy it), watch a DVD on my computer, write something, play my keyboard, or look up words in the dictionary and write out their definitions neatly on sheet of paper to adorn the walls. At nine o’clock my alarm goes off again with the same message “Do Achilles Exercises You Lazy Turd!” Putting some music on, I obey.

At about ten o’clock or so Andy comes and knocks on my door to hang out, having finished or needing a break from work. This usually involves practicing to spin his basketball on his finger in my room. I join him in this endeavour with my own basketball. This goes on for half an hour or so and then we sometimes walk down to the shop together and buy a couple of cans of beer. When we return, if Andy doesn’t feel the need to work anymore, we watch an episode of The Mighty Boosh, Darkplace or perhaps some other comedy DVD. At around midnight we brush our teeth in the strange double sink of the bathroom, bid each otter good night and retire to our rooms to read. By one o’clock my eyes refuse to stay open any longer and unless the book I’m reading is really gripping I set it aside, turn off bedside reading lamp and slide down into decumbency.

2006-01-30T04:19:00.000-08:00

# So here we are then.

% Yes.

# Have you nothing more than that to say?

% That depends.

# On What?

% It’s hard to say at such an early stage.

# I’m not sure I understand.

% Well, you see, I can only tell if I’m going to speak right before I do.

# Don’t you think it over beforehand – decide what you’re going to say?

% That would seem to be the done thing… but with hindsight, with my most recent utterances the words just came to me, they were born on my lips… from nothing it seems.

# Really? Hmm…

% …

# Now that you mention it, that seems to be what happens with me too.

% Yes, even now I can’t seem to access any particular thought or thinking, I have no idea what I’m about to say.

# Indeed … indeed … I’m beginning to feel rather strange. It’s damn unnerving actually. It’s as if the present creates itself and all we are left with is the immutable past. The preceding moment is set in stone but we have no control over the ensuing moment.

% By Jupiter you’re right. And even the past only seems to go back a minute or so.

# Startling.

% What are we?

# Alas, we are mere puppets my dear percentage, puppets of no innate volition, our every word – our very Being – is but the whim of our creator and controller.

2006-01-30T04:15:00.000-08:00

Golden Fish

Oh! to have the wind in my gills I would give my top fin. Sweet death, dry land! This tiny bowl is a torturous existence. I’m stuck in here like some kind of novelty viewing item. My gormless facial expression – which by the way is biologically fixed, I couldn’t smile if I wanted to! – it makes them think I’m en empty headed, forgetful, goldfish. Well I’m only one of those things: A goldfish. So misunderstood! Three second memory? A myth, completely fallacious I tell you! Truth be told I can remember things for up to a week. I bet you didn’t know that eh? That’s … for comparative purposes … err … um … six hundred and four thousand eight hundred seconds. You see, the face is misleading, I can even do maths.

2006-01-29T03:30:00.000-08:00

I needed a shave. But first, I needed to scratch my balls. That done, I shaved. Why can’t everyone else’s life be so epic? Sometimes I marvel as my own inexorable heroics.
Is it possible to think sideways? I think it is. I had to think sideways to come to that conclusion. You might say it proved itself. How might we investigate this neo-angular thought? Well, this writer suggests we begin by viewing it side-on, since Rome wasn’t built in a vacuum; it rests on the shoulders of Thai ants...

I had planned on writing a parody of the book I spent all day reading (Moral Philosophers and the Novel by Peter Johnson, one of my lecturers) but no one that will conceivably read this will have ever had the displeasure of wasting their eyes on it. Horrifically dull and conceited, not to mention unclear, the book spends the largest part of its pages on name dropping and quoting literary greats, perhaps in the hope that the author might become one. This endeavour is yet more evidently pursued when one catches the author indulging in gut wrenchingly inelegant metaphors which achieve only a thickening of the pea-soup smog that the author weaves like an over eager God throughout his creation. It appears his cloying style has rubbed off on me. This is no doubt the sorry consequence of my having used a number of my hours today harming my education with his retrograde jumble of words. At best this book is a neighbours dog turd in the garden of literary philosophy, the kind that you accidentally step in barefoot when you wonder out in the dewy grass at midnight in the summer.

And now, a musteline interlude:

“Weasels possess an active, courageous, and bloodthirsty disposition. They are voracious predators and generally hunt alone and at night, feeding principally on mice, rats, and other rodents, as well as on fish, frogs, and birds' eggs. Weasels are valuable rodent controls and can pursue their prey through holes and crevices, under dense herbage, up trees, or into water. [In other words they are fucking hardcore].” Britannica Encyclopaedia.

2006-01-28T03:40:00.000-08:00

I was walking back home on a windy night when I suddenly thought I had left my wallet in the library. I took off my gloves and thrust my hands into my pockets in search of it. It was safely seated in its habitual abode. Calmed I made to replace my gloves and keep the biting wind from my feeble skin. But I only had one glove. Where was the other? I turned back and faced the wind, for I had been walking steadily all the while. There it was, I had dropped it a while back, and it was hurtling towards me in a happy-dog-like manner. The wind was pushing it along at quite a pace. It looked like a severed hand seeking its wrist. It was at least 10 metres away but its wind-driven volition was so strong it was making a direct line straight for me. Incredulous, I stayed where I was. As it came closer I put my hand to the floor as if receiving a present from a group of ants, and it thrust its happy form into my grasp.
Its anthropomorphic joy immediately filled me with deep contentedness and, smiling, I turned and continued home, with the wind pushing me along.

“The double bass is not two fish, it’s an instrument Gran, a musical instrument!”
“I could have sworn they were selling down at Bob’s fishmongers”
“Well, if they were, then it wasn’t the type of double bass I want”
“Lucky – we nearly had them for Christmas dinner…”

We went to see a jazz band and Tommy, who listens to punk and knows little else, would not be convinced that they were improvising. His implacable position was that they had spent hours beforehand working out what they were going to play so that it just sounded like improvisation.

2006-01-28T03:39:00.000-08:00

A digression in a different accent entitled ‘I dye grass’

“Who’s been dying the grass?”
“No one dear, it’s always been green”
“Oh … has it?”
“Yes, I’m quite sure of it darling”
There was a knocking at the door. As fate would have it there stood a salesman who promptly divulged his providential spiel:
“Hello, I’m Marty from the grass department of Trinselberg’s Flora and Fauna Coloration Ltd, and I’m here to offer you a range of permanent and semi-permanent grass and small shrub dyes. Application is free with any purchase so you don’t have to get your hands messy.” He shot us an empty smile and awaited our response.
“Do we need any more colour in the garden dear?”

2006-01-28T03:37:00.000-08:00

Oats

Nine scattered oats adorn the kitchen worktop. I must have spilled them this morning when I was making my porridge, I thought. I sat morosely and pondered my existence. Why nine oats? what kind of a number is nine? It’s absolutely insignificant to me, it means nothing – not a thing– if God wants us to understand things why doesn’t he have me accidentally scatter ten oats? Yes, ten. That’s how many fingers I have, and toes too. It’s the number that we all understand. And why not have the oats fall in some special shape? A constellation maybe, the one I was born under perhaps? What is god playing at? He can’t be paying attention if he allows such dire randomness to transpire. This irremediable contingency is bound to scratch at the very souls of his sentient creations, those that possess the capacity for reflection at least, namely human kind. Though I dare say I can say nothing definite on the consequences of, say, a rabbit coming across these nine oats in my kitchen.

So there I sat, my very being in tatters, torn to shreds by the negligence and sheer laxity of our revered creator. I dared not approach Him directly on the matter for surely, if the rumours of his beneficence can be trusted, His Almightiness was most busy with matters of much greater exigency (no doubt somewhere in the world there scurry unfortunate creatures of a degree of want unknown to me; creatures whose hunger, on entering my kitchen, would undoubtedly impel them to gobble up these nine oats without even taking the time to contemplate their ghastly anomalous protuberance. God, one would hope, has enough on his hands with these wretched individuals). So I refrained from engagement in that telepathic wonder that we call prayer and, instead, attempted to darn the rags of my psyche with an introspective needle and thread. Why is God giving me nine oats? I could scarce get beyond this point when Maud, the most quiet and nimble of our maidservants slipped past my crooked figure, leaning forth as I was pondering the oats, and somehow managed to clear them away as she went. Spinning round with a bemused look on my face I noticed the entire kitchen was now spotless. Not an oat left extant.
“Sorry Sir” she mumbled with a tired look on her face “Did you want me to leave the kitchen dirty today?”
“No no, not at all my dear girl” I straightened my back and smiled “A fine job you’ve done, a fine job indeed. Most exemplary!” I gave the lovely little thing a pat on the head and wandered out into the conservatory feeling quite content. What a nice day for a picnic, I thought as a warm breeze tousled my dark curls and I smiled to myself, splendid.

2006-01-28T03:34:00.000-08:00

Inner Waters

I live in a one-toilet, two-sink, three-bedroom, four-hob, five-seat, six-cupboard, seven-room, eight-shelf, nine-oat, ten-soul* flat. All this is true. Astoundingly accurate, it reflects reality like the most uncanny of mirrors. But only one of these ten rock hard facts is actually significant for the short tale that follows. I got carried away.

It was late at night and I was swerving in and out of sleep in my lonely room. The desire to urinate crept up on me from the inside as it is wont to do, if it came knocking at the door I’d be more than shocked. I tried my utmost to ignore the increasingly intense bladder-borne entreaties. I squirmed reluctantly like a tortured worm. But all to no avail. The appeal was successful. The homeostatic motion was passed and I was obliged under force of nature to rise from my partial slumbers and seek the propinquity of a willing receiver of my liquid excretions. Stumbling down the corridor in the half-light I tried the bathroom door. It was locked. “I’m in here,” said a voice amidst the sloshings of a late night bath. There is only one toilet in my house and it lay behind this locked door.

Returning to my room swiftly I cast my eyes about for an emergency replacement lavatory. Beside my bed there was a pint glass. Snatching it up I dangled my apparatus into the glass and stood in the dark swaying under the weight of my fatigue, eyes shut, listening to the high tinkle of my necessary act. The glass became warm in my hand. I opened my eyes and squinted through the darkness at the murky fluid. Placing it on my bedside table I made to clamber back into bed. I was struck with the incorrigible presentiment of waking the next morning, fresh as a lily, to this glass of noisome urea. The only available sink was in the kitchen but this was imprudent on sanitary grounds and involved the weary traversal of too many stairs for my liking.

The window it was then. I took a quick look to see if there lurked any itinerants but, considering the time and temperature, was unsurprised to observe a completely empty street. In a few swift movements I opened the window and flicked the piss out of the glass onto the rainy street below. It struck me that there was not a soul about to watch the extraordinary stream that rose from the paving stones. I stood for a moment and appreciated the glorious steam of my own creation. Then, shutting the window, I leaped back into bed.

*No it is not quite as you guessed: there are more than five shoes in the house. I meant soul as in mind, consciousness, psyche, sentience, what have you… 'How can there be ten souls in a three bedroom house?' I hear you ask. Well there is Me, Andy, Tess, Nick (Tess’ boyfriend), two gerbils, two hamsters and two rats (all belonging to Tess). No word of a lie.

2006-01-27T07:10:00.000-08:00

When you read this you'll wince your ears off.

I am currently walking down Kartoum road. Yes I am currently walking. I'm not holding a pen and paper as I walk. I'm not speaking into a dictaphone. I'm just walking. Honestly. How you are reading this I don't know. I never wrote it down. Someone else must have read it off my mind while I was asleep. Or perhaps there was someone in the bushes on Kartoum road, listening to me say this. Why would i already be saying these things though? Shit I just busted myself. I am writing. I'm at the computer typing in fact. Oh the pain of lost romance. The present tense cannot legitimately be used by a writer unless... well you can imagine. I don't think Henry Miller was fumbling pen against pad while fucking women in parisien toilets was he? Thats why he didn't use the present tense. Fuck the present, make love to the past.