Thoughts Whilst Listening to the Beatle's Blue Album

I'm listening to the Beatle's blue album and it sounds to me like something from about 600 years ago honestly.

But in a good way though.

Like abbey road in London was in the renaissance.

They didn't even have colour then. Like films. So to me its from a long time ago. I think cos its on vinyl as well.

The needle on the vinyl sounds a wee bit like the lines on films. Vinyl is usually black. An uncompromising colour.

You know how you see top of the pops from 1967 and its black n white? Like as if it could be 1605 or something.

Long John Baldry and Mick Jagger is gonna be guy fawkes. Mick jagger goes out and gets a fag and its guy fawkes working in the shop.

The fireworks plot is under way under the top of the pops studio. engelbert humperdinck is in on it. 

But John Lennon's voice is so remote, like an ancient ship from a hundred hundred years ago. 

If I played this to children they would think it was from the stone age, they would actually love it because of that.

You know what i mean? As soon as they had colour it became modern. it started sounding modern. 

Everything from the last fifteen years sounds so fuckin digital. Like loud digital and everything, all the sounds are at the same level and there's no contrast. 

It's just a loud sound in the ear. that doesnt do anything. like its made of smooth steel rather than organic wood. 

somehow its just like a blank wall. 

That's what i think anyway. 

No Big Deal

I had a job interview in the west. All my job interviews seem to be situated in a westerly quarter.
I remember that Cockney bus driver drove me all the way to Steelend that time. An ignorant man.
One day I took to walking and walked all the way to Crossford in fact Carneyhill and beyond. I was threatened by groups of boys on streetcorners.
The idea was to choose a point of the compass and walk in that direction all day. In this case it was west. When undressing for bed that night I took off my trainers and unleashed a foul stench, as of old stale popcorn in cinema seats. Due to all the strenuous walking.
These squares are like the squares of Edinburgh New Town. Charlotte Square of mysteries, Sundays waiting for a bus. At the other end, St Andrew's its twin. Ever walked round a draughty dusklit square?
My beloved Edinburgh, 20's jazz, the smell of hops....
Like the square in Grand Theft Auto you'd drive your car to... It was called "Central Park" or even "South Park"... Near the sidewalk were ringing telephones. Take an A-Z, a map of some description. Glossy.
A gardening job up in the grey country. Near villages. In Culross. "Hard landscaping", drystone walls, etc. But I really want this job.
The address is printed clearly on the document. All is glossy and user-friendly.
Anxiety at dusk. Sleek as the Old Town...
Had to stop in a phonebooth to consult my A-Z.

An Art Gallery in Israel

An art gallery in Israel, a museum, a shopping centre. Empty white walls round corners showing at first nothing. You wander up and in and over, seeking something. Past  the pillars and collonades, up the escalator to the next shiny level, sometimes you mistakenly catch the angsty eye of a customer and see sudden pain and discomfort. Then again here are the privileged kids, that stand in small knots with serious black-haired girls at their centre, or near bespectacled tall girls in earnest conversation.
Here too there are kids who look just like Americans, gloomy boys in sportsgear with light shoulderbags and ipods, with boyband hairdos above their smooth fat faces.
I think: This country is trying to be a European liberal democracy, with all that entails, carrying on as though nothing were wrong. And, as always, to know them, I look into the heart of their popular culture.
Whenever I get to a foreign country I always check out their comics. They reveal vast amounts about the psyche of the nation, in the way that old Beanos and Dandys do about the British. The Belgians had Tintin, a pink, blond, clean boy scout, in clear line, the French had Asterix and Obelix, who were sensuous, loving, and fought and feasted. I go to some lower level where the shelves are stacked with product, a cultural centre. The Israeli comics and cartoons are actually quite sophisticated, stylish, and here are bound volumes of them, set in clothcover by some artist, someone hip and trendy who knows graphic design trends.
And what images and cartoons do the Palestinians make? Dunno. Not represented.
So go to Australia and look at Australian comics. And roam uphills to bungee jumping spots from dams and bridges merely to feel the wind in your hair. The bushy green foliage, the wet droplets of dew. Reel across the highway in the southern summer, a hot fragrant wind blowing against you, unless you surrender to it and then it would seem to carry you on, merge you with the sunlight, and you would become blond, free, drunken, your spirit enlarged. And you can tell the posh backpacking girls, "I've been in Australia!"

Prologue to a Letter

What is this that commands my observance and demands that my tired eyes droop down?
What is it that compels me onward so vilely and distractedly to write these falling lines?
What can it be? Mere boredom? Indifference? Ennui? Surfeit of TV darkened rooms loneliness? Fear, and telling myself not to fear?
I have simply lived too long. And that statement has force to it, and feeling, more so than if it were uttered by a man fifty years older than me.
It's my abominable selfishness again I s'pose. But left abandoned here in these rooms what are boys like me s'posed to do? After having drunk the last cup o' tea... Watch'd the last TV show... Had the final wank... Become disinterested in the next chapter of the novel, the latest record?...

On Confession 2

Dusty attitudes of confession. The routine for confession during school hours was this: There was a quiet time allotted for us all in the sober classroom to reflect on our sins and it was understood that silence and shoegazing was required for this purpose by us the little kids. The quietly officious teacher before trudging out to leave us in our repose would hand out, kindly and hushed, little confessionary leaflets to help us.
These leaflets were impossibly worn and patchy and made out of some old grey nunnery card held together by feeble tape, but their antiquated mustiness only added to their official, pious look. The whole thing was taken with dread seriousness by everyone.
The leaflets has a brief rundown on the procedure and then a whole lot of sins possible for confession, of various categories. This was basically to help us out a bit since being little kids we didn't have much to confess. The nuns who wrote the leaflet had in fact been imaginative and encompassed a broad range of wickedness. I always tended to choose those vaguer, lightweight sins which it was hard to specifically pinpoint but which I knew I must've committed at some point back home. Such vague misdemeanours as selfishness or unforgiveness, maybe even the occasional use of bad language or perhaps a lie here or there. These sins were certainly true though kind of trifling.
And then, off we would be dispatched one by one to the confessional.        

Ruth

Ruth shifts her silken kneedown limbs over silk,
The silk of downy coverlets and quilts.
Her arms, T-shirted, press breastward, enfolded,
Her poor slight breasts quash nobly,
Her hips scrape, turn over, fingers dance,
Becomes a pensive noble mumbling mood,
Her ass slicks over silks to perch on the edge,
Her lengths of thigh trapped tight together,
As dark as nameless caverns that were never seen,
Herself so perfect, so little, and contained,
Her flacid weak encurled strands recline
Upon the sallow pillow.
Golden rings upon her dumb uncultured fingers,
Her feeble succoured nails,
Her legs, by custom, pressed tight together,
Like dusky battlements never to be
Scaled, engaged, attacked.
She senses such would be a sin,
And sends it on the air,
The intelligent cigarette gesticulations.
She fixes her hair,
Sighs and watches TV.  

Social worker

Social worker: Bearded and corduroyed in flare.
Also with a female accomplice, 'nother hippy type.
In livingroom. His name is Terry.
I'm very angry at 'em. Want to remove 'em from house.
He knows too much about me.
I realise, in the hall. He is too close to the family.
And yet I'm reticent about going as far as to manhandle them. V. angry.
And how about arguments in front of them.
Associations: The '70s, floral wallpaper, brady bunch.
Pull his beard. And that chick now where did she come from,
Swallowing apolegitically. Like the prim stocktaker in the store, "30 Lambert and Butler".

February 2

Sleep for the pallid boys inside, remembering nursery rhymes, peeling juicy grapes, lurking awhile in the dim little toilet near the clutters of spare parts and shiny mirrors, dreaming of the towering library and its granite walls.
Work for the potbellied geezer unaware of his stubble, cursing and drilling at roadsides, clods of mud on the sleeping pick-axe. The thin apprentice with his spiky hair and with blue overalls is grappling with something and thinks of sex.
Motors vibrate as dreadlock boy laughs at the thrill of electric life emerging from the city off-licence soon to regard gaudy CD covers in the corporate wall-display store. Iggy Pop in black and white is thin and looks gloomy from denim and a feather cut. Iggy has thin nipples and a hatchet face which looks to be dreaming fishlike on heroin.
Now a poem for the sad face girl going home to her stupid boyfriend or laying motionless in the dark and maybe stops to chuckle at TV. Pulling on grim clothing, family slobbering at TV guides and the potplant Christmas tree warmth of messy livingrooms and sexless bedrooms containing bright sad 1970's wall cupboards. And fluffy bridegroom clutter.
A poem for the frozen drops of rain that breeze and wet bridges, the lonely sun that comes out and shines brokenly down broad alleyways illuminating sad pubs where pipemen are fingering facial hair, or laughing at the pendulous breasts of barmaids, or thinking back to science fiction and the garble of robots.
A poem for the huge cinema with five screens, for emotion in the back row and loneliness and papery garbage and crunching snacks, or blond paperboys silent in poverty staring at the screen.
A poem for February.

February 1

Right now such flames are flowing in the February sky, that seem to make the smelling winds flow faster, increase, sweep far above our heads. And over on the russet roofs the old smell of rain is dank.
The air is crisp even now, frosty outside, silenced outside on the windowpane. The windows put a flat defence face against the melting outside. They are so impassive and dark dark brown in shadows, so uncaring.
But somewhere the redhead girls are smiling, and somewhere dreaming of drink they're diving heads, slurping beers, laughing at the scent of cheap perfume.
Love for the vulgar vaginal girls at lunchstops and deserting the stepped-off pavements of roads, near inside where the sweeties are banked up in rows, and an old man is sweeping past with his meditative hat. Street-sweepers in blue overalls moaning with pugnacious faces and the morning paper. They sweep up pink cards announcing last Saturday's football games, wedding invitations, guest lists and chewing gum.
Inside suburbia are fat televisions and holy icons, tabernacle tables and polished sweeties in a box. Old ladies are knitting in bed, and screwing up mouths over sorrow. She dreams of the flowering hill, the secretive flowing burn, the taste of fresh cow's milk on the wooden bench at the crack of morn. And down steep hills floodwaters are coming, washing mud-brown the sleek fur of puppies.
The lazy sound of faraway traffic, broken carved-out packages on the bottom of reclining hills, ambulance driver reclining with his bald patch, ticking off his lottery numbers. The happy brunette passing wants to cry. Wants to fold fat sheets and smell lovely brew, the brew of feather warmth and shampoo.
Wants cream cakes and luxurious handsoap, wants translucent vases and to be reminded of the Virgin Mary. Wants to cradle the finest silks to her round belly, or to caress bleating sheep.
Instead has to strangle herself into grappling with rusty steel, with stinking leather, with the creamy sheen of plastic.

Mecca

You can see the beautiful mecca orange glow from here: A long line of streetlight, a row of lampposts that is streaming down on the curve of a hill, and which is really beautiful because it speaks not of busy traffic and harsh realities like in a sweltering city, but is shining yellow quiet gold out of a completely peaceful treescene, a bunch of grey and dark trees alongside a road where every now and then you can see busy silent glimmers of headlights brightly intent on destinations flicker in between the bodies of the sorrowful trees.
Downhill the lights converge and cluster around what might be a pub, some brightly lit establishment surrounded by warm coincidental streetlights, seen by tricks of perspective and lines of sight to form a beautiful and clean neon bright stardust cluster. Closer to here as I'm looking out the window away amongst all the new housing estate there directly under the lonely spectral lamplit road the lampposts're also shining bright in a lonesome empty road where you can see the dark suburban upstairs windows staring back like vacant eyes, at first glance vacant but when you look closer it's all actually all homely nice boxiness, on a similar quiet house on the corner there's a yellow porchlight or lamp above door of some kind which is casting its own more pathetic and forlorn light, not as harsh intent and staring as lamp-posts yet infinitely more heartbreakingly beautiful, speaks of bare feet curled under sumptuous duvets in dark lonely rooms, lonesome Sunday night suppers before school, dims my heart like an unspeakable tragedy.
Now I see a couple dark and tiny figures moving up the street. A couple arm in arm, young maybe, one in white jacket one in black, now they've disappeared. They're going home to light up rooms and happily sigh and switch on TV's happy and lost in the evening, fully stretching and quivering in the knowledge of their eventual deaths. Faraway there's a blue stern smokestack, and in the blue evening sky hangs a phantom whisp of cloud, like a fluffy rag commanded to glumly suspend itself, fixed.  

Art school interview dream 2

They were at art school in the seventies or eighties I spose. They belong to that punk or post-punk generation.
I am thinking of Beth: At sixteen she goes to art school. Her paintings were nothing special. She had a boyish figure and would brook no nonsense. She was working class.
She was interested in me cos I could draw and was always nice to me. It was Beth who told the twins of my expulsion from the college. I can imagine the scene.
If she caught the boys drawing cartoons, graffiti or manga style drawings, she would not tolerate it. She might even confiscate and bin the offending drawings.
A married woman, with kids. Even a woman like this is not immune to the art school disease: Pretentiousness.
The art school people are in their own little club. How do they justify themselves? I have always been jealous of people who can glide through life easily. The student boys and girls who are relaxed, whose actions are easy and untroubled, who seem to be not in the least affected by the kind of doubt which all but cripples me.
What does pretentiousness mean? To me it means the conviction that they have that what they are doing is important.
On what basis then can one claim to be an artist? I think of my father: He's certainly not anyone's ideal, but he is definitely unpretentious. He does not talk about his painting as anything important. Outwardly, at least, he is modest.
What are his views? He is a socialist and a republican. Is his art proletarian? In a sense it is. He cannot help but conceive and produce these images in the spirit of what he believes. And his beliefs are based on the experiences, sometimes bitter, of his working life.
You can't seriously claim that art is useful, but you can claim that it serves a purpose. The problem is to define the purpose.
Possible aims of art: To comment on society. To hold a mirror up to life and to highlight certain (usually negative) tendencies. To be spiritually uplifting in some way. To teach, to show alternatives. (This is positive). Could result though in mere propaganda. These obviously are not distinct.
But how many kids that go off to art college have a purpose in mind? And what purpose can I really claim for the images that I like to create?
Obituary of an artist: "He was afflicted by doubt throughout his life, seemingly at every turn. He seemed unable to sustain belief in either his image-making or his writing, its efficacy or worth".
It is belief that I lack....

Art school interview dream 1

An interview at Edinburgh. My attempts "to get into Edinburgh". In the back of my mind: that's where Lisa is.
I arrive at the place. Official air, like a dole office.
Bespectacled woman behind desk interviews me. Reminds me of Beth, an old tutor from Telford. Beth was a very nice lady and in my waking hours I feel friendly toward her. The interviewer is perhaps an amalgam of several female interviewers I have encountered.
Long nose, dark hair, glasses. The two times I've been interviewed at Edinburgh, they used a male and female interviewer.
First time: Woman seemed impressed with the portfolio and interview, glanced at the man, nodding, to gauge his response. The guy however continued to look doubtful. Frowned a little.
Second time: Went very well. Woman youngish short-haired. Guy looked pliable, soft, feminine. They were impressed with my published poetry. As it was my second time, I was super-confident.
"What vibe did you get?" said Lisa.
The dream interviewer is criticising my appearance and general demeanour. Other official figures are around, listening. All like the art college interviewers: Relaxed, informal, exuding youth and humour.
They have learned how to be authoritative and yet not compromise their youthfulness. This youthfulness seems eternal, one has the feeling it could extend into the fifties and beyond.

Electric White Part 5

At some point we went to the other house, farther up the street... I went in the livingroom. We were in Joe's mum's bedroom. It was warm, bright, muddled. We sat by the bed. I looked at the cheap country n western CD's... They were crap. He went, "That's my mum's...".
He stripped to the waist at one point. I went, "Hey, he's strippin!...". Everything was soft-focus and rosy and bright, like a blurred photo in a steamy room.
I lay on the livingroom couch and immediately went to sleep. I took off my coat and glasses. Mack was probably directing my activities at this point. He would've been a bit concerned for me.
I then left the house to vomit more than I have ever vomited in my life. I did it in the front garden. It lasted for ages. Mack was always hovering around, aiding and abetting the process. He brought out some water, perhaps with salt dissolved in it, in an effort to quicken the process. He got behind me, saying "Now don't be thinkin I'm a poof Michael" and tried to Hiemlich manoeuvre me.
I only just remembered to retrieve my coat and glasses from the house. Other people were around... Mack was concerned for me. There may have been mutterings from him about "take Michael home". After a while we did set off for his home, him supporting me more or less.
Once I set foot inside his mum's kitchen I had to puke again. He went "Over there Michael" and a fresh dollop of sick hit the stainless steel of the kitchen sink.
After that I was taken upstairs and put to bed in his bed. I took off my shoes and lay down. Mack must've left. His brother Andy was already in bed. I didn't sleep that night. All night I lay there in that darkened bedroom, dazed, stupefied, cast into a new phase of life.
When I woke up I discovered a grey stain of vomit on the tongue of my trainer. I went to the bathroom, locked the door, and was sick in an appallingly painful way. I felt my stomach contract violently, and hit the base of my ribs. Nothing came from my mouth but jets of clear, greasy liquid.
After this I felt perfectly OK.
Ellen had given me a cassette, with "Take That and Party" written on it, which I was supposed to tape over with some Nirvana or something. I taped "In Utero"...
I also brought with me a Rage Against the Machine album (on cassette). It was a great album with "Killing in the Name" etc, on it. The cover featured the famous photo of the Buddhist monk setting fire to himself.
These two tapes were in my jacket pocket. My coat had been left for a spell on the Easey's livingroom couch while I went outside to puke.
The next day the tapes had disappeared.

Electric White Part 4

We went on and came to where all the trees are. Between Lochore and Crosshill there was a veritable pine forest you'd have to traverse. You'd walk down a curious wooded path, past rows and rows of dark-green trees.
By the entrance or in some corner beside it I stopped to piss. There was a dirt track... There may've been a turnstile... The dirt track went off between the trees.
I felt viciously happy, extraordinarily buoyant. I didn't give a fuck.
We were all drunk by this time but me especially. I was perfectly happy. We accompanied Ellen home. We arrived back in his low street and Ellen went back inside. As we walked away from the house I took another big swig from the half-empty cider bottle. I knew at that point it would be wise to stop.
We climbed the opposite green bank to some grey civic building. Mack and Joe pissed there side by side. Their piss formed two grey streams behind them on the concrete. I said, "We'll name them the river Mack and the river Joe..."
Old women lived around there.
We ended up back in Crosshill. We went in somebody's house. It was the latter of the two houses in the street, where the young couple stayed. It was a few doors down from the other one. Inside the guy with the moustache was watching the Untouchables on Friday night TV. I slumped in his big brown easy chair and asked him "Do you mind me being drunk?". He didn't seem to mind at all.
... I said I had to go outside. I sat on the doorstep at the side of the house. I felt confused. A kindly-faced, middle-aged guy emerged from a neighbouring house to put his bucket out or something. (Perhaps he was putting something in the bin). He laughed shortly when he saw me and said, "Are you drunk?". I answered, "A wee bit".

Electric White Part 3

We were stood in the livingroom. It was a Friday night...
A little baby was there, and tottered forward, dummy in mouth. This was the baby of a couple, maybe related to the Easeys. Ellen was there. She remarked at the baby "Oh, braw, etc, isn't it nice" but I was unmoved. The baby beamed brightly at us both. It seemed like a personal benediction, a blessing... I briefly saw us as a couple.
We bought cider at some shop. Ellen was with us. We wandered through streets and came to a darkened field on the hump of a hill. We sat in the grass. It was night.
The lake was nearby. We swigged the cider. I could barely stomach the taste of it, but glugged it down anyway. I'd brought a photo taken at school, of Mack, in one of my pockets. I showed him this and he briefly struck a match to see it.
The photo was taken in the winter, round the back of the technical block. A medium layer of snow was on the ground that day. Robert stood to the left, grinning, legs akimbo, rolling up a snowball. Mack was near him in a similar attitude. Jeremy Phelps was in the photo too, grinning, standing off to one side.
Immediately after taking the photo I got hit with a snowball and my camera crashed to the ground.
Where we were beside the lake it was completely dark, sinister, with a wide bleak sky overhead. On the horizon a flare of flame spurted up now and again. It was from some factory or refinery... You could hear it spurt and falter across the night.
From across and around the lake we heard loud yelling voices. They seemed distant, threatening, like bands of marauders. We heard echoing male voices, deep-throated. There was a feeling of danger in the air. Mack would grow uncomfortable. We moved on.

Electric White Part 2

I went up there one night... We were going for a "night out". We were in Crosshill, we went in a house.
Crosshill was a deprived area. You'd walk down the streets and half the windows would be boarded up. Tough guys lived there. Walking into Crosshill, Mack gave me advice. He said "If one comes down the street towards you, don't look him in the eye". You'd see these types in their shellsuit bottoms.
The Easeys lived there. This extended family occupied two houses in a street. In one house lived the Easeys proper. The mum was a big fat woman, always in her dressing-gown, she was very aggressive and kind of crazy. She was a big country and western fan. There was a huge picture of Elvis on the bedroom wall.
They had dogs... The house stank.
There were a couple of girls, like teenage girls. One suffered from depression, and was able to take days off school. In one of the houses there was an older guy who lounged about on couches. He was surly, idle, staring always at TV. Occasionally an English guy would show up. This was some relative of theirs. He was scrawny, with white hair and thick glasses. He was kind of a geordie or something.
In the other house was a married couple. They had their TV in the corner... The guy had a moustache. Mack told me one of them had tried to commit suicide. He said it was slashed wrists.
I didn't particularly like the Easeys, and was kind of afraid of them. Their's was an authentic working class milieu. You had the feeling that you had reached a strange substrata of society, where anything was permissible. I never felt exactly threatened, but I did feel out of place. 
There was a raucous, anything-goes atmosphere that you would never have got in Mack's house. His parents were warm and accepting but they clung to a certain distance and respectability. 

Electric White part 1

I went to his house... It was a flat. The bus-stop was across the road from the pub.
Set back in the backstreets was a greyish block of flats. They were a simple and friendly family. His brother Andy was at that time cheerful and easygoing.
... we had spahghetti... I sat at their kitchen table.
They occupied a greasy-grey flat in Lumphinnans, the Little Moscow, with a balcony. Lumphinnans was an empty little place, where seemingly nothing occurred. There was a pub by the main road...
Mack later got a house there, many years later. It was the site of the infamous housewarming party where I offended him and his guests.
Mack had a computer. The computer was kept in a bedroom. Here Mack would go, sit on the bed... The curtains would be always drawn. There was a communal atmosphere, everything held in common, everything shared.
... Then they moved to Lochore. It was a lowdown, quiet street, fields behind. I'd go n play computer there.

Prometheus

Like if we came from the mountains and came down in the valley
And found our tribesmen slaughtered
And you are saying I simply do not care about politics.
I care about the changing of the seasons
And the song of the birds.
I can lie and say-
I have learned to love my solitude.
I have done violence to myself in wanting to jump
Out of this world.
And I will not roll in the blood and the mud,
Backbreaking work for babies not yet born,
Toil for millions in the new dawn.
I will find a corner in which my spit
Will become like a river,
And my curses (fucks and shits)
A rich compost heap
On which to grow
Bitter silver flowers of hate.
Razorsharp, the petals
Of brilliant metal.
Grit in the eye of the demi-god,
Burning a sacrifice to the immortal
Prometheus.

Written in Spring

I opened the window to the room for a few minutes and the outside air intruding met the enclosed warmth of the room. Condensation crept across the pane...
You can physically smell spring, coming from the west.
I am handing out dollar bills to passers-by I suppose. I got my job in the city, a schedule to meet.
I have been doing my research in reference to my sacred schedule. Drawn up rigidly.
My collection of first editions. I can offer education but one according to strict and thorough principles. I know the big money-brokers and where the parasitic attorneys hang out.
Whenever anyone asks what I'm doing these days, I answer "takin' care o' business". An asinine but effective phrase. All is under control.
Coffee games. Instead of sleep you find a bitter control. Whatever we want, it is not enough.
There is no superior race but there may be a superior mode of thought. Attached for a while to a particular culture or time. "Preferable" is a better word than "superior" perhaps, going from the universal to the individual.
Drawn slime in moron games. Parlour attitudes, motorbike is evensong. Drove us all crazy with his bitchin'. Walkin' behind us, demandin'. All of those awkward demeanours.  Thank the Lord I didn't go crazy.
I am walking out into a vacant spring
Bolstered by fine attitudes
Poor imitation of no thought
- Graveyard blooz.
I could do it again given half the chance.  

An Assembly

I hated and objected to the assemblies.
I'd sit and mock them from the back row, within earshot of the teachers. I thought them a waste of time, and was very bitter and convinced about it. The line I took was that it was not education, and ate into teaching-time. I was very cynical about the whole idea of education.
Sitting up the back with Stephen Thompson and Beano, I made some cynical remark which they wheezed at. Sitting nearby, her fat backside in a chair, was my old English teacher, Mrs. Anderson. She gave no sign that she had heard.
After the religious element of the assembly was over, there was a long secular part which was, quite plainly and undisguisedly, a re-affirmation of authoritarianism, in order to cow the pupils en masse. The priest would shuffle off toward the doors at the back of the hall, off to attend to other business, his duty done and conscience quite clear. It struck me then, the hypocrisy and uselessness of the priests, the willing partners in this subjugation.
The rector and the heavy duty administration staff, the "strict" teachers, then took the stage. To me it was as if, after the token prayers and hymn-singing, the official religious stamp on the proceedings, the true nature and purpose of the assembly was revealed in all its ugliness.

un petit mort

This girl asked me, Have you ever fucked someone you cared about? Like actually cared about? And laying in their arms after, were you happy?

No, I felt deflated if anything, like staring into a void. That's why they call it a little death, un petit mort. There can be no real pleasure in anything so transient as the flesh.

I want hours, and days and months and years of illumination, centuries and aeons, not petty orgasms that you can get on any streetcorner. It's the things of the heart that last.

"What mean dull souls, in this high measure

To haberdash

In earth's base wares, whose greatest treasure

Is dross and trash;

The height of whose enchanting pleasure

Is but a flash?

Are these the goods that thou suppliest

Us mortals with? Are these the highest?

Can these bring cordial peace?

False world, thou liest."

F. Quarles