suburban garden

Then, the suburban summer back garden.

K. comes home from work and asks what i've been doing all day in the garden. "I had visitors. Meg came to visit. She sat with her legs curled under her, occasionally shifting to a cross-legged, hippyish position. Very shy, not saying much, smoking fags. Now and then though she smiled pleasantly. She has a beautiful face, i've often thought, round, modest, full of acceptance. I can see her there in her white top, stubbing out a fag.

But i was nervous and, attracted to Meg as i am, i was anxious to impress her. Restless i paced to and fro in the garden, now and then clutching or circling a washingline post unhappily. In an effort to impress her with my erudition and depth i hummed an old folk air, "Fordell Ball". She eyed me curiously, with an air of toleration, smoking a fag.

But then her brother Jack showed up. He looked immediately suspicious, paranoid, and ill at ease, grimly frowning beneath a large, floppy hat, and with a goatee and straggly black hair. He sat on the bench with an impatient eye on Meg, and, all too soon, had conceitedly whisked her off to another engagement.

But i wasn't lonely long, for, later, Britney came, and similarly sat in the grass with her legs curled beneath her. No makeup and with her hair carelessly tied back, chewing gum, her light voice, with it's rolling southern drawl, passing earthily from mundane reflections on the vagaries of life to naive flashes of humour or joy. In contrast to the silence of Meg, Britney starts up a monologue, and her style is very southern back porch philosophical, interrupted by yawns and platitudes, mundane complaints, or the beeping of her cellphone..."

suburban home

Back to my beloved suburban bedroom. The upstairs front master bedroom with its solid bow windows, so suggestive of calm and rest. You can even climb on the roof, the pinkish tiles, sit there and meditate on life looking out over the rooftops, a very relaxing place to be. Very private too. A place where can be seen, the broiling sun going down behind the far purple mountain top, illuminating briefly its august crags, or diverse weather conditions, glimpses of sun between drifting cloud, flashes of inspiration... and beneath stretch the polite and empty suburbs.

Where in drippy autumns i can invade discarded master bedrooms. It's instructive to measure the proportions of the casements to bolster your sense of ownership. Balance on the radiator, your fingertips clawing at the top of the sturdy windowframe, the trusty double glazing. If you swing it open you can see reflected the familiar sleepy street, but in reverse of course so it looks like someone else's street, someone else's slumbering driveways and chimneys and rainwashed tiles. Then when almost shut the mirrored surface, smooth and clear as a real mirror, shows an unexpected reflection; straight into next door's master bedroom, where the woman of the house is sitting. Outside black night has fallen, making the few lighted suburban bedroom windows blaze like so many jewels in the dark. She's a sturdy suburban brunette, she hunkers down by the bed to read the instructions of some self-assembly desk she's received. I see her thick white brastrap fall from out of her sleeveless top and remain against her plump upper arm, her face concentrating. My hand inches toward my fly.

Until i lose my balance and fall off the radiator.

O autumnal somnolent suburbs, plush-carpeted bedrooms, yellow lights in windows isolated amongst blackness, where the voyeurs stumble...

Boys on the Bus

On the bus, two boys are contending:

"Ye'd huv tae get past me. And that's a hard hing tae dae."

"Pit it this wey: I could batter anybody fae here or Ballingry. The only person i'm no sure aboot is Davey Gow. That's one hard cunt.

The last time i was up in Ballingry i goat jumped. Ah ken who it was eh, it was Davey Gow. We were walkin up the road and they started followin us. Ran after us.

He was pure screamin and greetin. They goat him on the groond and started kickin him in the heed."

"Fuck sake."

(later) "I've got a wee razor in my pocket".

Now talkin about someone else: "He's a fanny anywey. Wee fag. He's a poof".

"We were in the adventure playground, ken by that big wooden hing, an he was bein cheeky eh, so i ran up an smacked him.

He fell on the groond, and he went: "Ye dinnae hiv to bang me, like!" (this in terrified, crying tones) So i smacked him again."

"What age was he then?"

"...primary five..."

(later) "He's quite hard actually. He gave me a brilliant fight the last time."

(The way they talk, their excitement, it's as though violence has taken the place of sex. They never indulge in sextalk with the same level of exhilaration.)

Beginning of an incomplete story

There are occasions when reality cracks, when everyday life ruptures, and something sterner and more vivid comes through, wrenching itself into being through great violence or extreme anger, and everything, all the cluttered contents of life, your personal possessions, your shallow list of idly-pursued loves and hates, grows suddenly pale and looks flimsy and meaningless in comparison.

The whole force of these occasions is that they are unexpected and overwhelming. The fabric of reality seems momentarily to warp, and all the old certainties are toppled over while a cold stab invades the belly. Individuals who experience these moments see in sudden sharp contrast the vanity of all they strive for.

M wasn't expecting it. It was about four or five in the evening and he was lying on his side in his grey-sheeted bed, dreaming listlessly. He half-dozed, fantasising, blinking as if troubled over some puzzle. It was chilly in this dusty attic room and he had put on a thick woollen jersey and turned up the collar of his shirt before huddling beneath the blankets. Shadows deepened on the dirty plaster walls, the ragged cardboard boxes full of junk that cluttered the floor. The room was disordered but cosy, although too long spent in it would reveal its curiously bare atmosphere, like a storage-room long disused....

UIST (dream)

Uist is an island in the Hebrides. I went there with a party of men, like old shabby Victorian scarecrows, and old disgraced mothers with disfigured faces, or faces shrouded and not seen. Not modern mothers, more like Sicilian widows.

We are stranded and on the run. It is eve. A brown and twinkling twilight, from ancient squibs of almost Oakley primeval tree. Like in a Hammer horror we gain an old Victorian mansion. A Chekhov "stately home" of dark rolling lawns like a St. Andrews... A setpiece, almost a period drama cliché but way darker.

On the run. I escape from almost protesting mum who seems now modern, in august t-shirt, and is collaborating, in that senseless way, with the Victorian moguls and rogues, the dark "villains". A jumble of emotions, i can't tell whether recent or new-formed. There are lassies there too (downstairs) past the oak panelling n dusty curtains. Sexy lassies or my compadres. Perhaps other dark women, all dark-clothed.

I go upstairs and hide by a window overlooking the very lawn. Detection is very near. I hear muffled voices, and strongarms almost collaring me, though i hide, weasel-like, in this closet feebly twisting myself inward, holding breath. I from somewhere have got a mobile phone, owning to the owners of the house, "o" the owners, old lady vacant, with dead wedding cake n bedraggled dress be-phantomed in rooms. A cool dark mobile phone.

I press again and again the numbers "999" "beep beep beep" "999" "beep beep beep". Anxieties behind the shrouded curtain. Maybe the phone don't work. Evil red digital numbers.

I can see the villains down there on the lawn. Tophat and teeth, dark mustachio'd like 1910 movie villains. Thin, and my traitor mother maybe in their number? Or other confused captive family members.

NINE NINE NINE. "Police please", breathed very quiet. The blonde receptionist, operator wife, slinky and unworried. But i can't get through, and might be found if i speak out loud. My voice might travel through the thin pane of glass.

On the shadowy phone i find the imprinted address, or stuck on with identification sticker. The address as if common brown Gaeltach farmer, an old Hebride fussiness. I discover the place we are at is called UIST. A proud brown island, pouchy brown of inslets and crinkly maps, like a slob of the sea. I realise that the emergency services are ineffective or sleepy upon Uist (might've been "South Uist") the red light on the phone twinkles in vain.

But upon discovering the address, and subsequent phone number, i hit upon the vital idea of ringing up area code and random numbers thereafter, to contact some other humble Gaeltacht fishmouthed farmer, for big emotional rescues. Area code round zeroes threes.

......... Tension mounts. At same instant, the "villains", those shadowy figures outside on the lawn, notice me behind the window and shout up at me (i am discovered).

The men have hairy Robinson Crusoe faces.

Memories of Ruth

Up in his springtime room Ruth comes to visit him. A brunette girl about five two, roundish face, soft skin, eyes violet. An old childhood friend, last seen years before. She stands ambiguous and relaxed, sturdy legs in her skirt, unsmiling as yet. Above, the yellow electric bulb, bare in its socket, has been switched on.

He feels excited and embarrassed to see her there in the disorder of his room, his hair shaggy and unbrushed, his mouth eagerly, sharply smiling, eyes peering from behind his tinted glasses. By the wall is set his brownwood cabinet of shelves, on which sits his TV, stereo, and ranks of shelves, wide and deep, strewn with accumulated junk; piles of magazines, scrawled-upon pieces of A4 paper, books, photographs, ID cards, all of it haphazardly and loosely arranged.

Ruth and he sit before the TV in that intimate darkness which is like the darkness of winter. Colour TV, the only bulwark of reality. The news is so precision-sharp, the cathode rays so clear. Comforting and maternal, the box.

But sitting there he is seized by a compulsion to find "memories of Ruth"... Something that will relate to their childhood together, some document or physical thing, something scribbled down, best of all a distant photograph of her, looking sweet and trusting, proof of their one-time affection. Ruth stands non-commital, is making ready to go perhaps. He passes his hands among the shelves and rummages in the assorted debris. A panic is on him.

"What're you doing?", a bored half-smile. "Looking for memories!". Under pages of A4 paper, blue-scrawled, almost revealing to Ruth the edges of glossy porn mags, or their backs festooned with glossy phonesex ads. Is this all there is? Nothing pertaining to their past, their great closeness, no photo of her, no documentation or evidence even of his brother, who she also knew well back in the day, to flourish, to show her, to revive something of the link between them, to rekindle within her some fellow-feeling, some warmth?

Apparently not. Instead he can only find pictures of himself which must do... "Well, pictures of me!" Some ID cards, like laminated credit cards, each one glossy, hard, shiny-efficient, bearing the digital image of his foolish face. A bunch of photobooth pictures taken at various stages, done in black n white in groups of four, some ludicrous or unrepresentative, some snipped-off to be attached to interview forms. In one he is wearing an ersatz crown from the college's drama department, his face inclined upward in three-quarter profile, mock-regal. Uncovered suddenly, it looks incongruous, like a dunce's cap.

These unexpected images of himself, tumbling forward, seem like a hidden substrata, a suddenly gushing wellspring of his own folly.

On the Void Number one

Here i am in a void. What is it? A space left by the failure of activity. Reading, viewing, eating, speculation, have all failed. How do i fill the void? Or, why do i wish to?

The void confronts me with myself, a thing which is repellent because full of truth. The self here is different from the body and different from the image. The body is that which acts, it is not seen except peripherally. A photograph is an object, a piece of glossy paper. It is external. A mirror reflects back an image; it is what we show and take ourselves to be. We are filmed, and we get a different image, perhaps more accurate.

But none of these approach the self. The self always reveals itself as and with a void. It is full of silence, and the terrible message of this silence is that it bears no message. It is incapable of messages. My thoughts are repelled by it, and stray to sordid doubt, self-pity, fears.

What can be known with a certainty about the future? That it will contain good and bad. That it will be somewhat like, and yet wholly unlike, this moment. And what can be said, in particular, of my future? That there will be nights when distractions and amusements will fail, and a void, a frightening silence, will intervene.

What to make of this space? Most will say, in effect, distract yourself further, take your mind away from it, place your attention somewhere else. For this void results from a mere drift of attention, the drift of attention is what makes it known, what reveals it. I think rather that it has lurked there all along, as it were behind everything, while i pursued my distractions, a full and complete thing before which my distractions were shadows. But this fullness and this truth is frightening because it carries with it not only a mute finality but a suspicion that words are useless, that thought is useless, the truth being that truth itself is fugitive and all my endeavours intricately futile, my grasping at facts to find that they are like snowflakes, they turn to nothing in my hand.