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.

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".

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.

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.

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?

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...