An outing to the museum, for which a sense of the macabre and a certain voyeurism is appropriate, is to take place. Outing is to take place in the evening. We want to cover all the bases.
A kind of a school outing or of an archaeological society. Or of the standard bored and semi-interested students. No permission slips required from parents. The kids in the current group are all over eighteen, some are as old as thirty. Among the group is a dark and sombre boy called Alvin, tendency to brood alone, sits by himself on the minibus.
The members of this group have known each other since infant school, they know one another's foibles and peculiarities intimately, they have shared old jokes and enmities long since. Now they have settled down to their mild and cynical twenties, curious, facetious, worldly-wise, thinking the whole idea of a trip to the museum a veritable jest.
Now here they are in the museum, a large chunk of Victorian neo-classicism set in the middle of a long seedy street in the middle of the city. In they trip, and commence to traipse slouchingly around the outer perimeter of exhibition rooms, some wandering loosely off on their own, others chewing gum, arms folded, staring haggard at totem poles and stuffed animals. The whale skeleton is pretty cool, and that triceratops skull and check out the kodiak bear. Fossils are pretty dull, but how about that copy of the Delphi charioteer? Upstairs they have the caveman exhibit, floor of a neanderthal's lair, plus a fish skeleton fossilised and hung up. The whole place is a tribute to the noble science of taxidermy.
History section is not bad... some arrowheads, a flintlock or two, some Pictish rune-stones... a sabre from the Civil War... don't bother with the engineering section unless you want to look at 1902 motor cars and James Watt's fuckin turbine steam engine...
The charitable foundations that fund these places sure do a good job. Either that or private enterprise, whatever. The noble museum with the stars and stripes flying outside it. Look at these magnificent collections of ethnology and renaissance art.
Sunday 22 December 2013
Blue Room 12
The depression of a key, the click of a mouse, a blip on a screen... and it was all gone. Fanning out my investments over a wide radius, may as well have took it to the bookie's and put it all on a nag. At that accelerating scale of interest, at those fantastical rates, my spurious investments drained, life's-blood-like, away and forced me into liquidation. I need the services of some building society assistant to draw me a diagram, explaining cash flow and necessary overturns, explaining the fantastic intricacies of this forbidden world of finance. Right now in the heart of the City there are young men like me, hungry-eyed and cold-hearted, their jubilation and rapaciousness expressed in flutters of paper and the clicking of mouses.
And oh to be part of that invisible and mystical brotherhood, prostrate at the feet of the inviolate market, gladly would I slit my own throat at his altar, that omniscient god whom the brokers rush to worship, whose litany is the financial times index, and whose inviolate and transcendent calmness can be seen in the expressions of bank clerks. My unwise investments? Consider them a sort of sacrament.
I ended up sat in my high chair wit a cup of tea, steadily at work on a sort of Plan B:
"My plan to get into college".
An unrealistic aim, maybe, what with my record, but I must have something to fall back on. But, the millions having been lost through the unwise investments, a parental career talk has been occasioned with father...
(And thus we commence from the top, Kojak moment and all, until the bitter closing theme-tune once again strums lazily forth).
And oh to be part of that invisible and mystical brotherhood, prostrate at the feet of the inviolate market, gladly would I slit my own throat at his altar, that omniscient god whom the brokers rush to worship, whose litany is the financial times index, and whose inviolate and transcendent calmness can be seen in the expressions of bank clerks. My unwise investments? Consider them a sort of sacrament.
I ended up sat in my high chair wit a cup of tea, steadily at work on a sort of Plan B:
"My plan to get into college".
An unrealistic aim, maybe, what with my record, but I must have something to fall back on. But, the millions having been lost through the unwise investments, a parental career talk has been occasioned with father...
(And thus we commence from the top, Kojak moment and all, until the bitter closing theme-tune once again strums lazily forth).
Blue Room 11
But the indiscretions of the night pass away soon enough, and are replaced by the wide, hard, rational day, when a young man must be grave, composed, and set his mind on business. Here I am now, careful shirt and neat tie, serious expression, absorbed in my sets of calculations. In the early afternoon whilst at work ,y favourite place is at the summit of one of the livingroom's walls, here I can perch quite comfortably, with a foot in either room as it were, and work undisturbed. I like the feeling of elevation from the common round I am given by this position. Ditto my umpire's chair.
But on with the day's work: My laptop is open and ready. I have balanced on the foam-thick wall various bundles of memos and notes, the requisite sections of newspapers, chew-ended biros. In my brand new foolscap notebook, glossy red cover, I hurriedly carry out an analysis of the world's markets. Index and share prices. The plummeting or ascending of commodities. The beautiful and intricate relationships of the dollar, pound, euro, yen, so delicately transcribed.
Now I have the gambler's temperament, momentarily reckless, unfeeling, hardbitten. If we deal primarily in thousands then steadily and with coolness increase the mark. The truth is when riding the rough beast called the market one must expect the occasional jarring loss. For which read, in my case, a series of disastrous and foolish investments.
But on with the day's work: My laptop is open and ready. I have balanced on the foam-thick wall various bundles of memos and notes, the requisite sections of newspapers, chew-ended biros. In my brand new foolscap notebook, glossy red cover, I hurriedly carry out an analysis of the world's markets. Index and share prices. The plummeting or ascending of commodities. The beautiful and intricate relationships of the dollar, pound, euro, yen, so delicately transcribed.
Now I have the gambler's temperament, momentarily reckless, unfeeling, hardbitten. If we deal primarily in thousands then steadily and with coolness increase the mark. The truth is when riding the rough beast called the market one must expect the occasional jarring loss. For which read, in my case, a series of disastrous and foolish investments.
Wednesday 18 December 2013
Blue Room 10, Indiscretions
This particular tart had been selected for me by mother dear, who had entered the Blue Room first, straight-mouthed and firm-handed, in her dull starched clothes and her shadowy pinned-back hair. Yes mommy dearest had fulfilled her maternal duty, as she was ever wont to do, and procured a whore for her stressed and reckless son. Money changed hands discreetly and without fuss. I also found out, and must admit, while in the room with the girl, that she was some relative of mine. I come from a large, entangled, complex family. It's quite possible that I could become involved with a girl only to find that she's a second cousin once removed, or some such fuckin thing. There are innumerable great-uncles and aunts who made multifarious marriages and sired a myriad weans, as is the wont of the Irish. A third cousin? A cousin german? No matter.
In any case, do not suppose my conscience troubled me for a second. I was too drunk to care, all the subtleties of the situation failed to register in my brain. My arm around her and with a few pints inside me... Oh reader, if you could have seen me then! My face I'm sure was unspeakably and vilely contorted, like some vulgar red-faced laird who has had a beef dinner set down in front of him.
My inhibitions had gone out of the window. I stared, enrapt, feebly excited, at her neat, regular thighs set tight together, her plump breasts, her dimpled arms, I groped and squeezed, intent with drunken single-mindedness, I pressed her blue-tinged flesh...
In short I got it out of all proportion, drunk, sorrowful, and stressed as I was, and all on this glum-mouthed and distant-eyed girl with her folded arms and her legs that have to be persuaded to open before her body surrenders, going limp and slack.
In any case, do not suppose my conscience troubled me for a second. I was too drunk to care, all the subtleties of the situation failed to register in my brain. My arm around her and with a few pints inside me... Oh reader, if you could have seen me then! My face I'm sure was unspeakably and vilely contorted, like some vulgar red-faced laird who has had a beef dinner set down in front of him.
My inhibitions had gone out of the window. I stared, enrapt, feebly excited, at her neat, regular thighs set tight together, her plump breasts, her dimpled arms, I groped and squeezed, intent with drunken single-mindedness, I pressed her blue-tinged flesh...
In short I got it out of all proportion, drunk, sorrowful, and stressed as I was, and all on this glum-mouthed and distant-eyed girl with her folded arms and her legs that have to be persuaded to open before her body surrenders, going limp and slack.
Sunday 15 December 2013
Blue Room 9, the Girl
But boy am I stressed. After a busy day playing with the boys in the City. You bet I need some relief.
Here I come now, my shirt wit sleeves rolled up, my creased and weary tie, a selfish idiot in no mood for an argument. I blunder recklessly inside the Blue Room, a surging bouncy castle-like movement. I feel and look odious. Most of the prostitutes have already been dispatched on their various errands. One girl is selected for me: A lumpen and insensible girl in her late teens sitting huddled wallflower-like on the bench, like the last box of washing powder on the supermarket shelf.
Fairly pallid and chubby-armed. Rather reticent and might have a tendency to go stiff-bodied, making the act of love difficult. She seems morbidly distracted and blank-faced. As I sat beside her my arm around her and my hand on her belly, talking in a loud, savage, drunken way, I begin to wonder: What planet is this girl from? There seems to be an awkward, sour, bluish tinge to her skin, to her bare flesh, her dimpled thighs which I press with my hands. Maybe it's the light in here?...
I look in her eyes...
Vapid, empty, strange, as if an insectlike intelligence was figuring and plotting abstractly therein. A few specks of glitter on her cheeks. Cold and sorrowful mouth. Her eyes seem to glow with a sour electric-blue light, like someone seen on an infra-red camera.
Here I come now, my shirt wit sleeves rolled up, my creased and weary tie, a selfish idiot in no mood for an argument. I blunder recklessly inside the Blue Room, a surging bouncy castle-like movement. I feel and look odious. Most of the prostitutes have already been dispatched on their various errands. One girl is selected for me: A lumpen and insensible girl in her late teens sitting huddled wallflower-like on the bench, like the last box of washing powder on the supermarket shelf.
Fairly pallid and chubby-armed. Rather reticent and might have a tendency to go stiff-bodied, making the act of love difficult. She seems morbidly distracted and blank-faced. As I sat beside her my arm around her and my hand on her belly, talking in a loud, savage, drunken way, I begin to wonder: What planet is this girl from? There seems to be an awkward, sour, bluish tinge to her skin, to her bare flesh, her dimpled thighs which I press with my hands. Maybe it's the light in here?...
I look in her eyes...
Vapid, empty, strange, as if an insectlike intelligence was figuring and plotting abstractly therein. A few specks of glitter on her cheeks. Cold and sorrowful mouth. Her eyes seem to glow with a sour electric-blue light, like someone seen on an infra-red camera.
Saturday 14 December 2013
Blue Room 8, The Blue Room
Beside the large, prosperous and respectable living room lies a sort of recess or alcove, which when stumbled into reveals itself as surprisingly long and dense, like an alleyway, very sepulchral and shadowy, with a threatening bluish light, leading to its common name, the Blue Room. Set against the opposite wall is a long wooden bench.
Once the entrance to the Blue Room is discovered, you realise it is only a sort of ante-chamber to the main livingroom, partitioned off, as though it were in some manner secret or shameful. You cross the threshold into the large, white-walled livingroom blinking in the light. And your feet sinking in the soft floor.
In this ante-chamber, known by the household as the Blue Room, sit a dozen prostitutes, sent by a local boarding-house for this very purpose. Wearily and gaudily made up, some wigs, a sparkling of glitter, heels, a bit of cleavage, a hot pant or two. Chubby-thighed lackadaisacal girls with crossed arms, wanting a fag, older women with softly amused faces spectral in the blue light, rolling their eyes at one another. Their bums on the wood bench.
Now as evening comes on and the shadows get deeper among the padded walls, the hookers are sent for one or two at a time. They appear to work in shifts. At periods of say ten minutes each they depart, swinging their handbags, heels sinking in the soft floor, as they march briskly through the lounge.
It can only be surmised that upstairs the clients have begun to arrive, and are waiting nervously in sparse rooms for the expected blow. Maybe these tarts are going to service the man of the house, waiting above redfaced and salacious, unbuttoning his waistcoat.
Perhaps this marks the commencement of their shifts, and they depart one by one to pre-assigned streetcorners and doorways, to dank and draughty sidewalks under streetlight. Waiting for the shifty sidling john.
Like in a doctor's waiting-room: "Next!" and up gets the next hooker in line, arms folded, huffy downturned mouth, glides out of the Blue Room and into the light.
Once the entrance to the Blue Room is discovered, you realise it is only a sort of ante-chamber to the main livingroom, partitioned off, as though it were in some manner secret or shameful. You cross the threshold into the large, white-walled livingroom blinking in the light. And your feet sinking in the soft floor.
In this ante-chamber, known by the household as the Blue Room, sit a dozen prostitutes, sent by a local boarding-house for this very purpose. Wearily and gaudily made up, some wigs, a sparkling of glitter, heels, a bit of cleavage, a hot pant or two. Chubby-thighed lackadaisacal girls with crossed arms, wanting a fag, older women with softly amused faces spectral in the blue light, rolling their eyes at one another. Their bums on the wood bench.
Now as evening comes on and the shadows get deeper among the padded walls, the hookers are sent for one or two at a time. They appear to work in shifts. At periods of say ten minutes each they depart, swinging their handbags, heels sinking in the soft floor, as they march briskly through the lounge.
It can only be surmised that upstairs the clients have begun to arrive, and are waiting nervously in sparse rooms for the expected blow. Maybe these tarts are going to service the man of the house, waiting above redfaced and salacious, unbuttoning his waistcoat.
Perhaps this marks the commencement of their shifts, and they depart one by one to pre-assigned streetcorners and doorways, to dank and draughty sidewalks under streetlight. Waiting for the shifty sidling john.
Like in a doctor's waiting-room: "Next!" and up gets the next hooker in line, arms folded, huffy downturned mouth, glides out of the Blue Room and into the light.
Wednesday 4 December 2013
Blue Room 7, an Exposition of the Ideal Home
But now for an exposition of the Ideal Home, our house of the future, our sumptuous and foolproof livingroom. With a digression into the particulars of the adjoining alcove, called the Blue Room.
First, the aforementioned glass ceiling, really consisting of a huge overarching bubble dome I suppose of some unbreakable plastic substance which protects the groundplan of the house entire. So that from a position high in the air an onlooker could clearly see the most intimate details of our household.
The impression from below is that there is no ceiling at all, so clear and transparent is the dome. As though a giant or accident of nature had reached down and plucked off the roof at one remove. Open plan, yes very. We in this household believe in an open lifestyle and in transparency of intention. And we enquire earnestly why roofs are needed.
Second, as above mentioned, the floors and walls of all the rooms are compacted with a thick and sturdy layer of foam, like your average padded cell. One could fall quite easily from quite a height and not be injured, and the walls you can bury your face in, they are like pillows, like a welcoming bosom. Now it is rumoured that behind this layer of padding on the walls are numberless sections of circuitry and wiring, whose purpose is to constantly analyse the prevailing conditions of the house and its inhabitants via hyper-adjusted sensors, and adapt both the physical dimensions of the house and its environment, ie temperature and light-intensity, in line with these conditions.
This is a mystery to us all. In practice, the only effect we can discern is that of the commonplace sliding doors, which hiss aside as you approach, which are all over the house. The supposed intricate networks of computer circuitry that lurk in the walls are in any case inaccessible behind all the plush, beautiful padding. Like I say, a mystery to us all.
Now you might say that only lunatics need padded walls, to fling themselves against, and that only infants have need of foam-enforced flooring. But I say to you that the effect of our uniform and sterile walls, so plush and buoyant to the touch, is singularly pleasing and comforting. Perhaps the association is with the mother's womb. No sharp angles in this house, no possibility of a hard knock or a bump on the head.
First, the aforementioned glass ceiling, really consisting of a huge overarching bubble dome I suppose of some unbreakable plastic substance which protects the groundplan of the house entire. So that from a position high in the air an onlooker could clearly see the most intimate details of our household.
The impression from below is that there is no ceiling at all, so clear and transparent is the dome. As though a giant or accident of nature had reached down and plucked off the roof at one remove. Open plan, yes very. We in this household believe in an open lifestyle and in transparency of intention. And we enquire earnestly why roofs are needed.
Second, as above mentioned, the floors and walls of all the rooms are compacted with a thick and sturdy layer of foam, like your average padded cell. One could fall quite easily from quite a height and not be injured, and the walls you can bury your face in, they are like pillows, like a welcoming bosom. Now it is rumoured that behind this layer of padding on the walls are numberless sections of circuitry and wiring, whose purpose is to constantly analyse the prevailing conditions of the house and its inhabitants via hyper-adjusted sensors, and adapt both the physical dimensions of the house and its environment, ie temperature and light-intensity, in line with these conditions.
This is a mystery to us all. In practice, the only effect we can discern is that of the commonplace sliding doors, which hiss aside as you approach, which are all over the house. The supposed intricate networks of computer circuitry that lurk in the walls are in any case inaccessible behind all the plush, beautiful padding. Like I say, a mystery to us all.
Now you might say that only lunatics need padded walls, to fling themselves against, and that only infants have need of foam-enforced flooring. But I say to you that the effect of our uniform and sterile walls, so plush and buoyant to the touch, is singularly pleasing and comforting. Perhaps the association is with the mother's womb. No sharp angles in this house, no possibility of a hard knock or a bump on the head.
Tuesday 5 November 2013
Blue Room 6, Les Femmes
And you know I see out of the corner of my eager eyes where the streetwalkers lurk. Colloquially the tarts or should that be hookers.
Ah les femmes. Those extraordinary things. Let's see now I have a mother, big bro has a wife, and also there are the several females I interact with on a daily basis.
And my needs? Only for a sort of reserve stock, ideally a sort of harem if that were not so vulgar.
Someone or ones accepting or that is not too disgusted or able to hide disgust well. Someone with lowish standards or who is able to accept payment for services.
And the curious unsatisfied and vacant faces of the whores. Woman is a temple at which you ought to worship, bringing incense and gold, like mom or big bro's wife.
How mysterious my relationship with Woman, how soft and secret, and how degraded, compulsive, unsatisfying, my relationships with women.
Oh the blonde dye in the shadows, o the glittering lips.
Angry disinterested faces of the whores.
Ah les femmes. Those extraordinary things. Let's see now I have a mother, big bro has a wife, and also there are the several females I interact with on a daily basis.
And my needs? Only for a sort of reserve stock, ideally a sort of harem if that were not so vulgar.
Someone or ones accepting or that is not too disgusted or able to hide disgust well. Someone with lowish standards or who is able to accept payment for services.
And the curious unsatisfied and vacant faces of the whores. Woman is a temple at which you ought to worship, bringing incense and gold, like mom or big bro's wife.
How mysterious my relationship with Woman, how soft and secret, and how degraded, compulsive, unsatisfying, my relationships with women.
Oh the blonde dye in the shadows, o the glittering lips.
Angry disinterested faces of the whores.
Monday 4 November 2013
Blue Room 5
I work the stockmarket and I play with investments and maybe I do so rather ineptly. But I've a lot to live up to. Big brother is a big noise in the City.
He's a married man, early thirties, expensive but tasteful suit, carefully-combed fairish hair, mild and expansive demeanour. He often visits the house, strolling peacefully across the carpet, nonchalant hand in pocket.
The prestige attached to him... Because of wife kid two cars flight to Amsterdam on business... makes my rising albeit unstable star dim in comparison.
When he strolled into the livingroom he seemed mildly surprised to see me in my high-chair, my feet dangling down.
He may've wondered what occasioned such a symbolic seat. A judge about to pass sentence could not have looked more grave, or more foolish, than me at that moment. I looked down from on high with only my own unstable authority. And o for a gavel to bang so I could cry order.
We commenced an unremarkable conversation. With a dreadful, sickening eagerness I turned the talk round to my point. Dear reader, I'm afraid I touched him for a loan.
At this he seemed startled, though in a slowish, ox-like way, as though not comprehending the lingo, or trying to look beyond the surface. No doubt the dada has had a word in his ear: "The kid is not to be trusted, notoriously unstable character".
But like a jackal that has scented a fresh carcass I stuck to my point. With what dogged earnestness I pressed it home! I was a picture of sincerity, solemn-eyed and grave of countenance, like a dog begging for scraps. "Look, you can trust me, bro, you know I'm good for it".
Indeed bug bro knew no such thing, and I knew he knew. His loan and I intended it to be a large one would be frittered if not unceremoniously pissed away. Notoriously unstable character sweating in his rickety chair, quite ready to sell big bro and his two thousand pound suit his wife kids and two cars and his business class to Amsterdam down the river if it means a fast buck for yours truly.
He's a married man, early thirties, expensive but tasteful suit, carefully-combed fairish hair, mild and expansive demeanour. He often visits the house, strolling peacefully across the carpet, nonchalant hand in pocket.
The prestige attached to him... Because of wife kid two cars flight to Amsterdam on business... makes my rising albeit unstable star dim in comparison.
When he strolled into the livingroom he seemed mildly surprised to see me in my high-chair, my feet dangling down.
He may've wondered what occasioned such a symbolic seat. A judge about to pass sentence could not have looked more grave, or more foolish, than me at that moment. I looked down from on high with only my own unstable authority. And o for a gavel to bang so I could cry order.
We commenced an unremarkable conversation. With a dreadful, sickening eagerness I turned the talk round to my point. Dear reader, I'm afraid I touched him for a loan.
At this he seemed startled, though in a slowish, ox-like way, as though not comprehending the lingo, or trying to look beyond the surface. No doubt the dada has had a word in his ear: "The kid is not to be trusted, notoriously unstable character".
But like a jackal that has scented a fresh carcass I stuck to my point. With what dogged earnestness I pressed it home! I was a picture of sincerity, solemn-eyed and grave of countenance, like a dog begging for scraps. "Look, you can trust me, bro, you know I'm good for it".
Indeed bug bro knew no such thing, and I knew he knew. His loan and I intended it to be a large one would be frittered if not unceremoniously pissed away. Notoriously unstable character sweating in his rickety chair, quite ready to sell big bro and his two thousand pound suit his wife kids and two cars and his business class to Amsterdam down the river if it means a fast buck for yours truly.
Sunday 3 November 2013
Blue Room 4
Closing credits: List of names rolls upward quickly and without consequence. Impressive rolling theme-music signalling the end of the show.
Ah, the closing theme music! Tumbrils and cascades of sad Manhattan skylines! What memories and emotions you awake in me! Surely the saddest and emptiest sound: The closing theme-song. Minder! Dallas! Dukes of Hazard! How tragic it ever must be when the last note fades, when the last credit has rolled...
The saddest and most emotive closing theme-music of all was that of "Taxi": Mellow, urban-jazzy in an utterly drippy and tragic way, featuring a sad flute and lethargic keyboard, with the yellowcab meandering at night over the Brooklyn bridge. Used to come on in Britain on Sunday nights, and the closing theme-music to me meant one thing, time for bed and in the morning grey doom of Monday morning and school. So that the emotion even today is still waked in me by that dreadfully stirring and complacent bit of lounge-jazz...
But upon hearing the first notes of the closing theme-music I realize suddenly the show is over. And I totally unprepared! In a great fluster and panic I leap down from my high chair.
The show always ends either in a note of resolution (like a sitcom) or on a note of tension (like a soap opera) and I'm afraid I was so bound up in my problems that I completely failed to witness the crucial cliffhanger ending, and/or any decisions that may've been reached about me and my fate.
"I missed that. What happened at the end?" I inquire of Kojak, very concerned, as the closing credits continue to roll.
Kojak, smiling, turns his back on me and swiftly ambles away. Just before he moves out of shot, he mumbles "I'm not gonna tell ya son. That'd be too easy. Some things ya have to work out fer yaself".
Ah, the closing theme music! Tumbrils and cascades of sad Manhattan skylines! What memories and emotions you awake in me! Surely the saddest and emptiest sound: The closing theme-song. Minder! Dallas! Dukes of Hazard! How tragic it ever must be when the last note fades, when the last credit has rolled...
The saddest and most emotive closing theme-music of all was that of "Taxi": Mellow, urban-jazzy in an utterly drippy and tragic way, featuring a sad flute and lethargic keyboard, with the yellowcab meandering at night over the Brooklyn bridge. Used to come on in Britain on Sunday nights, and the closing theme-music to me meant one thing, time for bed and in the morning grey doom of Monday morning and school. So that the emotion even today is still waked in me by that dreadfully stirring and complacent bit of lounge-jazz...
But upon hearing the first notes of the closing theme-music I realize suddenly the show is over. And I totally unprepared! In a great fluster and panic I leap down from my high chair.
The show always ends either in a note of resolution (like a sitcom) or on a note of tension (like a soap opera) and I'm afraid I was so bound up in my problems that I completely failed to witness the crucial cliffhanger ending, and/or any decisions that may've been reached about me and my fate.
"I missed that. What happened at the end?" I inquire of Kojak, very concerned, as the closing credits continue to roll.
Kojak, smiling, turns his back on me and swiftly ambles away. Just before he moves out of shot, he mumbles "I'm not gonna tell ya son. That'd be too easy. Some things ya have to work out fer yaself".
Wednesday 23 October 2013
Blue Room 3
Dad turned his back for a moment, humpily gruffing in disgruntlement. And do you know, when he turned back a transformation had overcome him. Off with the little spectacles and gone was the sweep's-brush beard too. Almost as though Mission Impossible-style he'd peeled off a plastic face. Now he had the vapid face of a younger man, almost of a teenage boy with fairish hair slicked back and a smug, lugubrious pus.
And yet, one could see a certain greyness in the hair, which culminated in a tight ponytail, a thickness of the neck, a glaze in the eyes, a breath of humour.
(What's worse I wonder, the old-fashioned family values work ethic dad or these insidious potsmoking ponytailed hippy dads, which more effective, which easier to live with, which harder to contain? These babyboom muthafuckas come with all their own problems. As for the old doomed World War II generation, well at least they got things accomplished).
Now this story is beginning to reach its culmination. The dad-figure paces about the livingroom, ruminating to himself, figuring. After a few circumnavigations of the lounge the old fool takes from his pocket a wee lollipop which he sticks in his gob and commences to suck cow-chewing-cud like.
And as I sit bewildered in my seat a further transmogrification takes place in daddy's features. Pensive shrewd eyes, sharp profile, hair dropped from head, thickset, calculating, suckin on his lollipop. Spitting image, in fact, of a popular 1970s TV detective.
Now Kojak is a man I mightily respect and for this reason: He got results. He hath not the stature or perspicacity of a Columbo but is worth three Ironsides any day.
And yet, one could see a certain greyness in the hair, which culminated in a tight ponytail, a thickness of the neck, a glaze in the eyes, a breath of humour.
(What's worse I wonder, the old-fashioned family values work ethic dad or these insidious potsmoking ponytailed hippy dads, which more effective, which easier to live with, which harder to contain? These babyboom muthafuckas come with all their own problems. As for the old doomed World War II generation, well at least they got things accomplished).
Now this story is beginning to reach its culmination. The dad-figure paces about the livingroom, ruminating to himself, figuring. After a few circumnavigations of the lounge the old fool takes from his pocket a wee lollipop which he sticks in his gob and commences to suck cow-chewing-cud like.
And as I sit bewildered in my seat a further transmogrification takes place in daddy's features. Pensive shrewd eyes, sharp profile, hair dropped from head, thickset, calculating, suckin on his lollipop. Spitting image, in fact, of a popular 1970s TV detective.
Now Kojak is a man I mightily respect and for this reason: He got results. He hath not the stature or perspicacity of a Columbo but is worth three Ironsides any day.
Tuesday 22 October 2013
Blue Room 2
There I sit wit my cup of sugary tea, trying not to seem babyish but sulking a little. At least no bib has been provided. I'm secretly and tentatively at work on something among my creased sheafs of notepaper. Also scattered here and there are some flyers announcing upcoming gigs or the release dates of little records. I am secretly at work among all these, and the purpose of my design? It is slowly and painfully taking shape on various bits of paper: my plan to get into college.
Oh dear... I had been quite absorbed in the details of my secret schema, incorporating timeframe and logistical goals and all, when I'm afraid a jog of the elbow brought on by a certain agitation made me upset and partially spill my cup o tea... Then having to stem the sticky stains on the plastic tray with bits of flyer and yellow notepaper, cursing to myself.
Up comes daddy dearest and, while I'm distracted, snatches my most precious piece of paper, containing my secret schema, my sort of five-year-plan.
Daddy is a fifty-year-old, rotund, melancholy, great beard like a Tartar bushily outgrowing, pince-nez. "What's this? Ho ho... What have we got here?... "plan to get into college"!? Ho ho ha ha... You'll be lucky son."
..."With your qualifications, your lack of application, your record of failures and unreliability... Don't you realise you've no chance?"
Now in this dada spake wisely. Universities are not known for their eagerness in investing in the education of difficult, unqualified ne'er do wells, such as I am, a ne'er do well who, it must be added, has consistently made a hash of every venture he put his hand to.
Now dada is rather cross. Now and again he gets in a mood like this and, with something like penetrating insight, begins to carp and complain. "Thrown away the benefits of a perfectly good third-rate Catholic education" says he. "The rot started back in primary school, oh I see it all now. At that tender age, say about seven, the onus was on you to think of your future. You had the choice of subjects. Why din't you take Baby and Child Care? You could at least be decently useful in some ways."
"Because I didn't want to" I rejoined bitterly. "Takin' care of kids don't interest me. What, I'm sposed to take Baby and Child Care when I could take somethin interesting like... like Modern Studies?"
"Naw, you're sposed to be just really miserable". This in heavily sardonic and sarcastic tones. The level of debate has obviously sharply declined.
"Good, cos I will be!" I sharply retort, getting ready almost to shout now we have reached the level of the playground slanging match.
Well, the fact is I am often accused of being miserable, sour-faced etc, and notwithstanding the contempt implied for me in this my father's statement, I fell back rather stupidly on a certain stubborn pride I have in my own melancholy and lack of grace, you know a certain darkness and taciturnity can be attractive if cultivated properly. So I sulked: "If there's one thing I've always been good at, it's being miserable".
Oh dear... I had been quite absorbed in the details of my secret schema, incorporating timeframe and logistical goals and all, when I'm afraid a jog of the elbow brought on by a certain agitation made me upset and partially spill my cup o tea... Then having to stem the sticky stains on the plastic tray with bits of flyer and yellow notepaper, cursing to myself.
Up comes daddy dearest and, while I'm distracted, snatches my most precious piece of paper, containing my secret schema, my sort of five-year-plan.
Daddy is a fifty-year-old, rotund, melancholy, great beard like a Tartar bushily outgrowing, pince-nez. "What's this? Ho ho... What have we got here?... "plan to get into college"!? Ho ho ha ha... You'll be lucky son."
..."With your qualifications, your lack of application, your record of failures and unreliability... Don't you realise you've no chance?"
Now in this dada spake wisely. Universities are not known for their eagerness in investing in the education of difficult, unqualified ne'er do wells, such as I am, a ne'er do well who, it must be added, has consistently made a hash of every venture he put his hand to.
Now dada is rather cross. Now and again he gets in a mood like this and, with something like penetrating insight, begins to carp and complain. "Thrown away the benefits of a perfectly good third-rate Catholic education" says he. "The rot started back in primary school, oh I see it all now. At that tender age, say about seven, the onus was on you to think of your future. You had the choice of subjects. Why din't you take Baby and Child Care? You could at least be decently useful in some ways."
"Because I didn't want to" I rejoined bitterly. "Takin' care of kids don't interest me. What, I'm sposed to take Baby and Child Care when I could take somethin interesting like... like Modern Studies?"
"Naw, you're sposed to be just really miserable". This in heavily sardonic and sarcastic tones. The level of debate has obviously sharply declined.
"Good, cos I will be!" I sharply retort, getting ready almost to shout now we have reached the level of the playground slanging match.
Well, the fact is I am often accused of being miserable, sour-faced etc, and notwithstanding the contempt implied for me in this my father's statement, I fell back rather stupidly on a certain stubborn pride I have in my own melancholy and lack of grace, you know a certain darkness and taciturnity can be attractive if cultivated properly. So I sulked: "If there's one thing I've always been good at, it's being miserable".
Saturday 19 October 2013
More stillborn memories
I do remember though, some distant year, musta been 1980 or somethin, a dim recollection of the massive brooding castle of a brick house, as it seemed to me then, all humdrum with the idea of my dad inside it.
I remember emerging from the dark door in some idyllic evening, setting off to play with toys, being humble and disappointed, having to rush down some dark stone steps, I was too chubby and slow to keep up with my brother who was all blonde and dashing, going to cavort in fields with his eager friend.
Taking off into the afternoon perhaps, he was two years older than me.
I was usually red-cheeked and jovial, bumbling along to play happy games, yet I was left behind on the dank step, glumly... I seem to remember the idea of my mother pitying me in the doldrum hallway, brown memories, I remember maybe the idea of some plastic pullalong toy in one of these vast, fragrant bedrooms off the hall... It's all jumbled together and maybe I dreamed this too, and yet it's all connected to the idea of wild blue yonders and buzzy fields of vacant grass and stalks of thinny reed by the house as well as ancient buckled iron fences, where the kids can caper...
I seem to remember the idea of my sister, only 7 or 8 herself, sharp black hair and vampiristic red lips laughing along with a little girl joke inside.
I remember emerging from the dark door in some idyllic evening, setting off to play with toys, being humble and disappointed, having to rush down some dark stone steps, I was too chubby and slow to keep up with my brother who was all blonde and dashing, going to cavort in fields with his eager friend.
Taking off into the afternoon perhaps, he was two years older than me.
I was usually red-cheeked and jovial, bumbling along to play happy games, yet I was left behind on the dank step, glumly... I seem to remember the idea of my mother pitying me in the doldrum hallway, brown memories, I remember maybe the idea of some plastic pullalong toy in one of these vast, fragrant bedrooms off the hall... It's all jumbled together and maybe I dreamed this too, and yet it's all connected to the idea of wild blue yonders and buzzy fields of vacant grass and stalks of thinny reed by the house as well as ancient buckled iron fences, where the kids can caper...
I seem to remember the idea of my sister, only 7 or 8 herself, sharp black hair and vampiristic red lips laughing along with a little girl joke inside.
Saturday 12 October 2013
Stillborn Recollections 1
At first there are dim memories, stillborn recollections all faded ingloriously.
I can remember the most distant, farthest day, or rather maybe I can recollect the dim dream of it, the fantasy notion of what it should've been. This memory is so distant and over the years I've categorized it so many times as "the earliest" that I can no longer tell if it's real or just a fantasy...
I remember being in the house, which was a simple dubrown brick house, dark and dull, thought to me it seemed like a huge homely brick castle all full of massive dark rooms, the utter idea of HOME...
I seem to see a darkened livingroom, remembering the siblings who were themselves tiny infants at the time, me padding my little infant arse around the rooms. It's apocryphal and foolish to think that I can remember actually wearing nappies, and yet maybe I can. It was early evening, all was blue hush and home, I'm really beginning to think this all happened in a dream but I seemed to see a bright yellow kitchen, looking up to my friendly mother young and flared turning round peacably by the grill or by the antique glossy kitchen tiles all yellow and flowery, plastered linoleum and wallpaper smelling sadly of the 70s...
I seem to remember my dad or maybe the simple idea of my dad's presence there in that house, in one of the dark, warm rooms, far-off, perhaps pressing together his lips, half-amused by the ruddy TV, lounging with his vest and with his beard...
In my earliest memories my dad is seldom present, just the ever-present, inevitable idea of him.
This is my rememberance of being a joyful, glad little baby waddling around, but maybe I fantasised it.
I can remember the most distant, farthest day, or rather maybe I can recollect the dim dream of it, the fantasy notion of what it should've been. This memory is so distant and over the years I've categorized it so many times as "the earliest" that I can no longer tell if it's real or just a fantasy...
I remember being in the house, which was a simple dubrown brick house, dark and dull, thought to me it seemed like a huge homely brick castle all full of massive dark rooms, the utter idea of HOME...
I seem to see a darkened livingroom, remembering the siblings who were themselves tiny infants at the time, me padding my little infant arse around the rooms. It's apocryphal and foolish to think that I can remember actually wearing nappies, and yet maybe I can. It was early evening, all was blue hush and home, I'm really beginning to think this all happened in a dream but I seemed to see a bright yellow kitchen, looking up to my friendly mother young and flared turning round peacably by the grill or by the antique glossy kitchen tiles all yellow and flowery, plastered linoleum and wallpaper smelling sadly of the 70s...
I seem to remember my dad or maybe the simple idea of my dad's presence there in that house, in one of the dark, warm rooms, far-off, perhaps pressing together his lips, half-amused by the ruddy TV, lounging with his vest and with his beard...
In my earliest memories my dad is seldom present, just the ever-present, inevitable idea of him.
This is my rememberance of being a joyful, glad little baby waddling around, but maybe I fantasised it.
Thursday 10 October 2013
Blue Room 1
An argument with my daddy- who is alternately a gawky and bold-faced boy with reddish sweptback hair, a bearded patriarch looks like Trotsky, or Kojak mouth clumped stupidly like Joe Klunk on a lollipop. A big Greek nose and bald head. Manhattan skylines in background.
Mummy dearest is an anxious and angsty housewife, in a frock and with tight-curled hair afraid to express an opinion. Wrings hands. Like a 50's housewife with an apron.
I have been playing the stockmarket for a while now and baby I think I know the score. Those traders in the City are busy boys, and I am of them.
Absorbed sweatily in my laptop, why it's quite easy to forsake several million in a single afternoon. Those stocks and shares are impressive and volatile things, leaping and bounding so savagely. One must have respect for 'em.
The millions having been lost through an unwise investment at an inopportune moment, an argument has been occasioned with daddy. The parental career talk.
All this takes place in the spectral ideal homes livingroom, lounge of the future. Padded walls and floor, of soft pliant material. I sit by the side of the room, in my tall umpire's chair, a tray in front containing the following: Notepaper, pens, laptop and a cup o' tea.
Now the house of the future has no ceiling, the whole structure being protected by a sort of transparent and indeed invisible glass dome arching high above our heads. It is therefore possible to straddle the angles between the walls or partitions, all of which are sturdily reinforced and thick with foam cushioning.
Umpire's chair did I say? Why, that suggests impartiality and clear judgement. As I make my sets of calculations, I begin to wonder whether this chair has been appointed to me more as a kind of infant's high chair, and the thought is born: Am I infantile, imbecilic, not to be trusted?
Mummy dearest is an anxious and angsty housewife, in a frock and with tight-curled hair afraid to express an opinion. Wrings hands. Like a 50's housewife with an apron.
I have been playing the stockmarket for a while now and baby I think I know the score. Those traders in the City are busy boys, and I am of them.
Absorbed sweatily in my laptop, why it's quite easy to forsake several million in a single afternoon. Those stocks and shares are impressive and volatile things, leaping and bounding so savagely. One must have respect for 'em.
The millions having been lost through an unwise investment at an inopportune moment, an argument has been occasioned with daddy. The parental career talk.
All this takes place in the spectral ideal homes livingroom, lounge of the future. Padded walls and floor, of soft pliant material. I sit by the side of the room, in my tall umpire's chair, a tray in front containing the following: Notepaper, pens, laptop and a cup o' tea.
Now the house of the future has no ceiling, the whole structure being protected by a sort of transparent and indeed invisible glass dome arching high above our heads. It is therefore possible to straddle the angles between the walls or partitions, all of which are sturdily reinforced and thick with foam cushioning.
Umpire's chair did I say? Why, that suggests impartiality and clear judgement. As I make my sets of calculations, I begin to wonder whether this chair has been appointed to me more as a kind of infant's high chair, and the thought is born: Am I infantile, imbecilic, not to be trusted?
Thursday 3 October 2013
Hollow Discourse on Passion
There follows a hollow discourse on passion...
Passion is nothing. Nothing can be gleaned from it, and those extractors and expositors of sexual heat are at their bases, echoingly empty.
As empty as books, gifts, televisions, and computers.
Ponderously, painfully vacant, solidified lumps of arrogance and dolour.
If all those energies were joined, if every sex was combined, it would do nothing but spur itself up, make some loud noise and a tumult of friction, some cataclysm of cosmic fire, and then... and then!... it would collapse disgracefully, almost obscenely, in the aggressive waste of its promise.
Amounts to nothing more than grittings of teeth, clenches of fist, rushes of blood, seemingly for no reason.
Yes, and beauty is a void...
Passion is nothing. Nothing can be gleaned from it, and those extractors and expositors of sexual heat are at their bases, echoingly empty.
As empty as books, gifts, televisions, and computers.
Ponderously, painfully vacant, solidified lumps of arrogance and dolour.
If all those energies were joined, if every sex was combined, it would do nothing but spur itself up, make some loud noise and a tumult of friction, some cataclysm of cosmic fire, and then... and then!... it would collapse disgracefully, almost obscenely, in the aggressive waste of its promise.
Amounts to nothing more than grittings of teeth, clenches of fist, rushes of blood, seemingly for no reason.
Yes, and beauty is a void...
Sunday 22 September 2013
18th century parody on autumn
Now that pale-eyed autumn is once more a sojourner to our shores, treading the joyful grapes of summer into bitter wine, weaving the tapestry of regret with the distaff of memory, and, like a mourning bride, lighting the first tender lamp of melancholy in the hearth of the soul, it behooves we mortals to return to the contemplation of that serene tableau of autumnal ennui which is like the obverse of vernal splendour, and, like it, precedes and acts as herald of a sterner season, which is even like that season in the life of man unto which all due obeisance must in time be paid.
What matters, therefore, if in due time we are made poorer and our share somewhat diminished? To what god may we justly attribute such reversals if not to that deity which rules every pantheon with an irreversible will, namely, that first primal god, Chronos, he that wielded the pitiless sickle that with all due circumspection and in full measure, reaped?
Such too is our measure and our fate, we that are subject to the mild or harsh weathers of the passing moment, and those whims and caprices that, finding their genesis in caterpillar-like sloth, give birth, betimes, to passing beautiful butterflies of fancy bedecked in much splendour, and that, like those short-lived insects, find themselves wind-borne and storm-tossed, given ultimately, but not as seems inappropriate to their origin and destiny, to futility. What but their pithy dance among the flowers is fair, yet but it is short, and in like manner, we mortals enjoy a temporary season, finding only, in such dance and delight, the bitter pollen of experience, culled from so many living flowers of circumstance, whose paraphernalia and appurtenances, giving the appearance of solidity, are like the petals of those selfsame blooms, shaken loose at a moment's notice, and descending once more to a lowly soil.
Even now, brethren, is the leaf descended, and the flitting flies of proud blazoned august given way, to that first chill which bequeaths the equinox with a breath of waiting decline, promising, but still deftly and subtly, the riotous, the dionysian, and the gay, among the sere and withered, the due traits and character of the harvest season, the diabolic Samhain, the ripe apple, the treaded grapes, and the arbor flaming with gold and scarlet, flourishing and blooming with the fire and fullness of the year, a ruddy festival before a long sleep, a banquet accompanied by majestic music, always with a note of melancholy in the finer and nobler chords, played relentlessly, and in that relentlessness, a quickening of the pulse leading only to a faster-coming weariness.
Autumnus venit; Aestate fugit.
Friday 20 September 2013
It's impressed upon me more and more these days that life is the phenomenal side effect of reproduction, and like all side effects and side alleys and detours, fuller of riches than the main way, choked as it is by liars and charlatans, pandering to their biology with selfish moans, until they seem in their ultimate inevitable predictability to give birth to an infinitesimal and tiny orgasm, and, falling back disappointed, still claw at each other like plaster saints, like dying lovers in renaissance pictures, seeking some crumb of consolation from already cooling flesh, flesh that they see, already, crumbling and becoming dust, flesh that they see too readily was a nameless mass, a commonplace abode for an immortal soul, and not worthy of a word or of any effort. They have tricked themselves into love.
How many things are seen for what they are but not named. How often does the heart lie. How unceasingly do we deceive ourselves and invent language games to bypass the hole at the heart of life. We sometimes clearly see, but are always afraid to name, the void at the heart of life, the worm in the apple, the empty space in the middle of pleasure.
At night I'm profoundly emotional, tender, and full of serene regret, wondering at symbolic meanings of empty windows and streetlight. Alcohol opens up a metaphysical void for me, and leaves me strangely determined. It seems to me that I begin to see things in their true light, and how inconsequential they are. A door handle, that, sober, I would placidly turn, now seems like the merest dross, that I must reject, and batter out of my way, mere gross matter, and in every thing, only that, a turning to face sordid matter, concrete, streetlight, window-frames, masonry, all the monuments that man has built to his suffering, all the fucking utilities that he had blindly made to surround his wretched pissing and moaning. I see them in their true light, and cast them from me, painfully conscious of the time I have wasted in acquiring such rubbish.
I want something else, not petty matter, not petty orgasms, but things of the soul, the summit of some tremendous pyramid, made of spirit but clothed in matter, the pinnacle of some triumphant ideal, that one can sometimes achingly find, at last, in the arms, in the hair, in the mouth, on the thighs, between the legs perhaps, of some symbolic woman, standing in, as it were, for the ancient goddess that in the bronze age we all paid obesiance to, standing in for the symbolic muse, becoming the flesh in spirit, the spirit in flesh, and myself, the godhead, the drunk, completing the Trinity and granting myself absolution from the sins of the material world
How many things are seen for what they are but not named. How often does the heart lie. How unceasingly do we deceive ourselves and invent language games to bypass the hole at the heart of life. We sometimes clearly see, but are always afraid to name, the void at the heart of life, the worm in the apple, the empty space in the middle of pleasure.
At night I'm profoundly emotional, tender, and full of serene regret, wondering at symbolic meanings of empty windows and streetlight. Alcohol opens up a metaphysical void for me, and leaves me strangely determined. It seems to me that I begin to see things in their true light, and how inconsequential they are. A door handle, that, sober, I would placidly turn, now seems like the merest dross, that I must reject, and batter out of my way, mere gross matter, and in every thing, only that, a turning to face sordid matter, concrete, streetlight, window-frames, masonry, all the monuments that man has built to his suffering, all the fucking utilities that he had blindly made to surround his wretched pissing and moaning. I see them in their true light, and cast them from me, painfully conscious of the time I have wasted in acquiring such rubbish.
I want something else, not petty matter, not petty orgasms, but things of the soul, the summit of some tremendous pyramid, made of spirit but clothed in matter, the pinnacle of some triumphant ideal, that one can sometimes achingly find, at last, in the arms, in the hair, in the mouth, on the thighs, between the legs perhaps, of some symbolic woman, standing in, as it were, for the ancient goddess that in the bronze age we all paid obesiance to, standing in for the symbolic muse, becoming the flesh in spirit, the spirit in flesh, and myself, the godhead, the drunk, completing the Trinity and granting myself absolution from the sins of the material world
Thursday 25 July 2013
This town is always wet with the smell of nightlife and Indian food. Passing by the bleak, glowing doorway and you can smell the tandoori spices within. There's always a gloomy Pakistani guy in a threadbare jersey looming, looking fed up by the brick wall. In old alleyways nearby, in dull closets, that at night are dripping from telephone wires into tangled midnight bushes, all starkly lit by yellow, grim, offensive light. I had my dreams of Nosferatu here, I saw him flexing his claws here by the bush, or rather I dreamed it. Drip, drip, the danked and rusty sound. Nobody ever thought to check these bushes back and trim them, that's the wonder of it! Old tramps in busy shuffling afternoons simply ignored them and spat angrily on the pathetic concrete. Little bauble of spittle on the sicksplashed floor.
That always dreams of urban decay, youthful wreckage of forgotten drunkenness you can see in the wrecked, splintered carry-out cartons abandoned, just dropped pitifully on the pavement while he moaned in his drunkenness. His friends were overtaking him, cursing in the sniffly alley, greystained trainers thudding the awful concrete, arching toes to resist the steady, pulsing ground.
Always strikes me as awful that man can create such horrors! That billions of us boiling down here in the hole can be joyful, unknowing children in golden years of infancy and then, too late, too soon, we find ourselves getting swished by dank winds so we have to grit our bitter teeth on lonely streets, chomp some wasteful snack and discard the sorrowful packaging on the pissy puddled concrete! Where there are awful condoms lying trampled underfoot, likewise abandoned in the midst of some tearful drunken madness. Shirted, mournful youths laughing loudly, struggling drunkenly home.
Sometimes there were dim setback restaurants on sloping streets and which behind the dusty 70's blinds you could glimpse an unutterable brown sadness which was always related to ancient brown sauce bottles, all dun and plastic, sitting in the gloom of a homely laminate tabletop. When, as a kid, we would get chips there, I would never see what went on inside. I was almost scared to look in, I was too apprehensive to question. Perhaps there was the hum of a forbidding radio or bumbling TV on a neglected shelf in the back. The owner or proprietor was completely shadowy and used to peer and mumble in the static gloom over counters to hear the order. And sglash the squelchy redhot noise of chipfries which is drowning out the Saturday afternoon requests of brown-haired mothers on the tiled or worse, worn carpet floor in the dim foreboding hallway you have to step inside to announce your order. I got so scared, so shadowy scared that I didn't even want any food. All the hum and ancient creek of brownsauce bottle in the dark restaurant where I never ventured, all I saw were the sinister grey blinds which were the type which got raised with a little drawstring made of little metal beads, maybe uncanny genteel patrons sulking inside in dreams of Lennon, humbled over to draw them shut, all the grim cackle of tinny 70's radio and inside Harold Steptoe is gripping the brown sauce bottle, you can see his mean sideburns by the gaudy toaster.
That always dreams of urban decay, youthful wreckage of forgotten drunkenness you can see in the wrecked, splintered carry-out cartons abandoned, just dropped pitifully on the pavement while he moaned in his drunkenness. His friends were overtaking him, cursing in the sniffly alley, greystained trainers thudding the awful concrete, arching toes to resist the steady, pulsing ground.
Always strikes me as awful that man can create such horrors! That billions of us boiling down here in the hole can be joyful, unknowing children in golden years of infancy and then, too late, too soon, we find ourselves getting swished by dank winds so we have to grit our bitter teeth on lonely streets, chomp some wasteful snack and discard the sorrowful packaging on the pissy puddled concrete! Where there are awful condoms lying trampled underfoot, likewise abandoned in the midst of some tearful drunken madness. Shirted, mournful youths laughing loudly, struggling drunkenly home.
Sometimes there were dim setback restaurants on sloping streets and which behind the dusty 70's blinds you could glimpse an unutterable brown sadness which was always related to ancient brown sauce bottles, all dun and plastic, sitting in the gloom of a homely laminate tabletop. When, as a kid, we would get chips there, I would never see what went on inside. I was almost scared to look in, I was too apprehensive to question. Perhaps there was the hum of a forbidding radio or bumbling TV on a neglected shelf in the back. The owner or proprietor was completely shadowy and used to peer and mumble in the static gloom over counters to hear the order. And sglash the squelchy redhot noise of chipfries which is drowning out the Saturday afternoon requests of brown-haired mothers on the tiled or worse, worn carpet floor in the dim foreboding hallway you have to step inside to announce your order. I got so scared, so shadowy scared that I didn't even want any food. All the hum and ancient creek of brownsauce bottle in the dark restaurant where I never ventured, all I saw were the sinister grey blinds which were the type which got raised with a little drawstring made of little metal beads, maybe uncanny genteel patrons sulking inside in dreams of Lennon, humbled over to draw them shut, all the grim cackle of tinny 70's radio and inside Harold Steptoe is gripping the brown sauce bottle, you can see his mean sideburns by the gaudy toaster.
Sunday 2 June 2013
Poem on the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics
They tell us, the men in lab coats, with pride,
How the sum of energy glides,
That, running through the fingers of man,
Like wishes of Gods, is in terminal span.
Sadly, they say, silken energy,
Loved by red blood and a sickly sun,
Runs toward its own return,
And winding down, is all undone.
Entropic moves are the moves of day,
And each of our rays are waves goodbye,
Particles of pithy decay.
And underneath the urgent stream,
Only the torpor and langorous dream,
The sad and welcome and bittersweet
End of the chapter and one way street,
A mise en scéne in glittering paint,
The silence that greets the desert saint
Going toward an empty glade,
In a merely black and tinctured shade,
Abode of the forgotten dead,
Finding on dust and vacant lots
The loves of the leaves and the dreams of the rocks.
And one by one the lights blink out,
Absent matter and energy's rout,
There is no chorus from night to night
But peace in the valley beyond the light.
Those of us who know this truth,
Look no further for our proof
Than the glad smile which always meets
The light overturned and the swelling deeps
We long at last to submerge within,
Though loving the land,
Yet longing to swim,
As a serpent sheds an irksome skin.
Saturday 26 January 2013
To the pet shop
Me n my Chinese friend Jay go to the petshop to buy goldfish.
And rayed along the walls more like a petting zoo are meek cats and long-faced Afghan hounds that nod and avoid your eye.
Some dogs that back off when you approach them but then when you show you mean well let you embrace them, stroke their furry backs, feel the flip of their tails, their arch and curl. Black dogs, anonymous brown dogs, thin ones with ribs showing, reclining white ones with thick fur.
Dogs never look you in the eye. It's a threat amongst dogs, as is the baring of teeth. After all this time they have only fitfully adapted to life amongst humans. They merely put up with your embraces.
I tell Jay that I was born in the Year of the Cat. He tells me that the Chinese character in this case actually means "small furry animal with a weak back".
And rayed along the walls more like a petting zoo are meek cats and long-faced Afghan hounds that nod and avoid your eye.
Some dogs that back off when you approach them but then when you show you mean well let you embrace them, stroke their furry backs, feel the flip of their tails, their arch and curl. Black dogs, anonymous brown dogs, thin ones with ribs showing, reclining white ones with thick fur.
Dogs never look you in the eye. It's a threat amongst dogs, as is the baring of teeth. After all this time they have only fitfully adapted to life amongst humans. They merely put up with your embraces.
I tell Jay that I was born in the Year of the Cat. He tells me that the Chinese character in this case actually means "small furry animal with a weak back".
In the army barracks
In the army barracks, prison block of the new recruits.
60's functional architecture, godless and soulless. A main housing block and two outflung wings. Sounds: Coughs of angsty recruits and swing and clutter of cagedoors shutting at dusk.
And all the army newboy recruits are snoring except for one newly-shorn recruit. He lies facedown and bellydown on the rough sheet and embraces his pillow, screwing up his eyes and burying his face in the coarse grey material. At length he drops off but then awakens again when his own fitful snores are mistaken by him for the far-off cries of men echoing in the dormitory, like cries of battle. Near him sleep peacefully, as though dead, worn-our crewcut recruits, tangled in their blankets, feet jutting out at strange angles.
Now day is already breaking and from his bed he gazes out of the large window down past the perimeter of the barracks to the scrubby semi-rural semi-suburban wasteland beyond...
Between the angles of an electricity pylon and a wire fence and a grey administrative building in concrete is a grassy mound and a trickling stream, that in a burst of early morning sunshine seems like a rural idyll, a mini-Eden, to him in his captivity.
And now early to the nearby college dorm steps a statuesque and proud college girl, a brunette neatly and primly dressed, framed by the electricity pylon and the corners of the admin building, and seen by the soldier as though on a catwalk, jauntily stepping. She loves to taunt and encourage the awakening soldiers, who whistle and call out at their grey windows, this girl with her grotesquely proud and chubby face, her shapely calves, her lively, downturned grin. Something to tell the girls about later.
And she looks up at the high windows of the barracks, raising her skirt to show off her legs, patting her behind, mouthing words, seen distant in the early sunshine, pale and fresh.
-Is she an angel or a devil? Still lying face down on his mattress, the insomniac's hand passes below to between his legs.
60's functional architecture, godless and soulless. A main housing block and two outflung wings. Sounds: Coughs of angsty recruits and swing and clutter of cagedoors shutting at dusk.
And all the army newboy recruits are snoring except for one newly-shorn recruit. He lies facedown and bellydown on the rough sheet and embraces his pillow, screwing up his eyes and burying his face in the coarse grey material. At length he drops off but then awakens again when his own fitful snores are mistaken by him for the far-off cries of men echoing in the dormitory, like cries of battle. Near him sleep peacefully, as though dead, worn-our crewcut recruits, tangled in their blankets, feet jutting out at strange angles.
Now day is already breaking and from his bed he gazes out of the large window down past the perimeter of the barracks to the scrubby semi-rural semi-suburban wasteland beyond...
Between the angles of an electricity pylon and a wire fence and a grey administrative building in concrete is a grassy mound and a trickling stream, that in a burst of early morning sunshine seems like a rural idyll, a mini-Eden, to him in his captivity.
And now early to the nearby college dorm steps a statuesque and proud college girl, a brunette neatly and primly dressed, framed by the electricity pylon and the corners of the admin building, and seen by the soldier as though on a catwalk, jauntily stepping. She loves to taunt and encourage the awakening soldiers, who whistle and call out at their grey windows, this girl with her grotesquely proud and chubby face, her shapely calves, her lively, downturned grin. Something to tell the girls about later.
And she looks up at the high windows of the barracks, raising her skirt to show off her legs, patting her behind, mouthing words, seen distant in the early sunshine, pale and fresh.
-Is she an angel or a devil? Still lying face down on his mattress, the insomniac's hand passes below to between his legs.
Friday 18 January 2013
Case study 2
So you take to walking. The walls begin to close in on you, so you flee them. You gain the empty streets. It is now that you notice a very curious effect, one which relates to your fellow humans. You begin to lose comprehension of them. Their movements and words and ideas begin to seem odd. You see them, of course, engaged on their various errands. You see people in cars, briefly glimpsed. You see couples arm in arm. You see groups of friends, gaily chatting, confident in numbers. You see the blue light of televisions in livingrooms, curtain-obscured, plant-shrouded.
But all they do and say seems impossibly remote from you, much more remote than, say, an animal could ever be. A dog will still deign to sniff you, a cat may flirtatiously rub itself against you. They recognise a fellow creature. But these awful, smug humans, with their hideous selfishness, their pathetic privacy. How they avoid your eyes. How they dwell in illusion, how they artlessly construct and live in fantasy worlds. What can they possibly be thinking? What on earth are their motivations? You gaze at them as though you were behind a wall of glass, and they were all conversing eagerly in a totally foreign language.
Now, the former strange pauses, the feelings of something left undone, begin to expand and occupy more space. They combine with your forgetting of the language of social interaction, and well up at random moments. In the middle of the day, engaged in some commonplace task, washing up some dishes, say, you suddenly halt and struggle to get your bearings, as though lost.
Now is when the solitary man finds himself becoming odd. Sometimes on his nocturnal walks he murmurs to himself, or the interlocutor in his head. Often, now, he listens anxiously at night, trying to detect some texture in the silence, as though it was a blank stone wall that somehow bore a message. As though the silence were the pop and hiss of a needle on an ancient 45, and at any moment, some faint music would emerge. One night, the solitary man waits at a crossing for the light to change to green. It is midnight. He has walked up the long way from his empty flat through streets where seagulls fight over scraps. Suddenly, standing there, he says aloud "I am going mad".
Naturally, this frightens him very much.
But all they do and say seems impossibly remote from you, much more remote than, say, an animal could ever be. A dog will still deign to sniff you, a cat may flirtatiously rub itself against you. They recognise a fellow creature. But these awful, smug humans, with their hideous selfishness, their pathetic privacy. How they avoid your eyes. How they dwell in illusion, how they artlessly construct and live in fantasy worlds. What can they possibly be thinking? What on earth are their motivations? You gaze at them as though you were behind a wall of glass, and they were all conversing eagerly in a totally foreign language.
Now, the former strange pauses, the feelings of something left undone, begin to expand and occupy more space. They combine with your forgetting of the language of social interaction, and well up at random moments. In the middle of the day, engaged in some commonplace task, washing up some dishes, say, you suddenly halt and struggle to get your bearings, as though lost.
Now is when the solitary man finds himself becoming odd. Sometimes on his nocturnal walks he murmurs to himself, or the interlocutor in his head. Often, now, he listens anxiously at night, trying to detect some texture in the silence, as though it was a blank stone wall that somehow bore a message. As though the silence were the pop and hiss of a needle on an ancient 45, and at any moment, some faint music would emerge. One night, the solitary man waits at a crossing for the light to change to green. It is midnight. He has walked up the long way from his empty flat through streets where seagulls fight over scraps. Suddenly, standing there, he says aloud "I am going mad".
Naturally, this frightens him very much.
Case study 1
I am definitely not a misanthrope.
I call myself a lover of mankind, and I try to act as such. But it's true that mankind eludes me. I see nothing in men but rivalry, gliding like ghosts to their errands. I know for sure I am not like them. As for women, they are a blank. They are and remain a problem, even to themselves. They are a riddle. Watch them slouch with shopping-bags through streets. What can they be thinking?
And so it is that I, estranged from man, am cast among them, slowly, ponderously walking, through an autumnal town centre, in a post-industrial city. To an office building I go, and ascend the bare steps up to Level 3. The place smells like a hospital, and is so scrupulously clean that one has an urge to defile it. After standing at a plastic podium for a while, jabbing my finger on a touchscreen, my name is called and a small, curiously twisted woman with a faint moustache moves a slip of paper in front of me, which I sign with my name. This is my life and cross to bear.
I was explaining to someone, some interlocutor in my head, "I used myself as a case study. Effects of solitude on the human person. One goes through phases. First of all, one feels liberated. The mind is refreshed and acute. The deliciousness of the solitary vices, the solitary virtues, are happily indulged in. Lust and philosophy, life and history as joyful, diminutive games, played on the blank wall of the mind. Everything incommunicable and private, everything endogenous and subjective, can be revelled in. At first these encounters with the bare self are unchallenging.
After a while though, usually late at night, one suddenly finds in oneself, arising unbidden, a curious, hateful dismay. One discovers it like one would discover a cavity in a back tooth, with a sort of disgust and shame, and at the same time, a morbid curiosity about the sources and progress of the decay. It comes at bedtime, as a strangely definite sense that one has left something undone. It is when one tries to pinpoint exactly what has been left undone, that one becomes puzzled. Why can't I happily sleep, fold etc. to bed? And then the whole, stark truth wells up at you. I haven't lived. I haven't lived today. Something, some opportunity or other, has somehow been missed, or rather, it never arose, and this not arising, this failure of phenomena to appear, this absence, is felt like a presence, like a ghost in the room which stands all night by your bed and prevents sleep.
I call myself a lover of mankind, and I try to act as such. But it's true that mankind eludes me. I see nothing in men but rivalry, gliding like ghosts to their errands. I know for sure I am not like them. As for women, they are a blank. They are and remain a problem, even to themselves. They are a riddle. Watch them slouch with shopping-bags through streets. What can they be thinking?
And so it is that I, estranged from man, am cast among them, slowly, ponderously walking, through an autumnal town centre, in a post-industrial city. To an office building I go, and ascend the bare steps up to Level 3. The place smells like a hospital, and is so scrupulously clean that one has an urge to defile it. After standing at a plastic podium for a while, jabbing my finger on a touchscreen, my name is called and a small, curiously twisted woman with a faint moustache moves a slip of paper in front of me, which I sign with my name. This is my life and cross to bear.
I was explaining to someone, some interlocutor in my head, "I used myself as a case study. Effects of solitude on the human person. One goes through phases. First of all, one feels liberated. The mind is refreshed and acute. The deliciousness of the solitary vices, the solitary virtues, are happily indulged in. Lust and philosophy, life and history as joyful, diminutive games, played on the blank wall of the mind. Everything incommunicable and private, everything endogenous and subjective, can be revelled in. At first these encounters with the bare self are unchallenging.
After a while though, usually late at night, one suddenly finds in oneself, arising unbidden, a curious, hateful dismay. One discovers it like one would discover a cavity in a back tooth, with a sort of disgust and shame, and at the same time, a morbid curiosity about the sources and progress of the decay. It comes at bedtime, as a strangely definite sense that one has left something undone. It is when one tries to pinpoint exactly what has been left undone, that one becomes puzzled. Why can't I happily sleep, fold etc. to bed? And then the whole, stark truth wells up at you. I haven't lived. I haven't lived today. Something, some opportunity or other, has somehow been missed, or rather, it never arose, and this not arising, this failure of phenomena to appear, this absence, is felt like a presence, like a ghost in the room which stands all night by your bed and prevents sleep.
Thursday 10 January 2013
A Pain
The old pain has returned. Diagnose this pain, seek its origin and course, and how it may be ended.
The pain rests like a glowing coal in the abdomen. It is very reminiscent of a toothache. It feels as though something is irredeemably rotten, and the festering heat from this decay is the
source of pain. It is also like a hard knot which cannot be digested, in the stomach.
What is the effect of this pain? Lack of ability to concentrate. On a book, a television, a computer, a task. Outward objects appear like symbols, like adjuncts and emissaries of the pain itself.
The pain prevents sleep. It glows through the night, sometimes in the day it suddenly prevents movement, and a stasis ensues, in which the current action appears meaningless, and in that space of questioning, action is arrested.
The effect is to leave the mind confused and disoriented, hearkening for an answer to an unanswerable question, an impossible grasping after facts.
The pain is intolerable, insistent, always making itself known and grasping outwards for an answer. The pain is also a need and more than a need, a question and more than a question.
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