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Another
year nearly over. Time to reflect...
A new job, The Green Man and Womad. One bag of grass and six sets of photos. One magazine cover and one exhibition. One year older. Losing Nan. A year without Glastonbury: Only in dreams; like the one last night: My fingers cut up. Some labyrinthine assassination plot involving Keith Allen, who gave us a briefing. Then clearing a family out of the site; going back in and meeting a Pikey with a talking dog. I meant to get it all down...but it didn't seem necessary.
Lost the Poweroid; gained a Dell. My next machine will be a Mac. Fastest time on Intermediate Minesweeper was 40 seconds.
I met about six new interesting women. Had a few emails. About 44,000 page hits. Didn't throw up once.
Another year on-line: Reading Bsag, Jo, An Unreliable Witness, The Walled City, Ratatak and The Journal of a Writing Man. I'm worried about Chris. He has been off the radar for some time.
Sleepbot was a welcome discovery.
Bad feelings, yes, but sometimes it goes that way. You close your eyes or wait for a moment; see what the sea of thought throws up at you. Driftwood. Detritus. Anemone.
Jamming.
With a little luck another year will unfold. I hope to double up on everything.
Regards, friends.
Actions speak louder than words.
The gimp slumps in front of the machine. A candle burns by the screen. He takes a sip of Diet Coke and switches keyboards. This one is quieter, apart from the spacebar. A long haul is planned; which will probably fail. The words are the reality; the jam and lipstick from the old days. This is a respite from the bad dream. The maggot stares at the screen and sees his existence unravel.
Many cigarette breaks. I see him; the maniac from election night. So well spoken but apparently cracked and gone to seed. He smells bad and moves slowly, shoddily. He casts a vacant gaze around him. I wonder what his secret is.
Nothing. They come and go, the others. I dream of being a mandragon; a weredragon; with followers, money...accoutrements. No morality. Killing and fucking. Carry the Brone back into the world.
I hear them on the talking box, the clever ones. I hear them talking. They say that drugs are bad. So is prostitution. I wonder what drugs are. They say they wreck lives and should be banned. No mention of cigarettes and alcohol.
No, the fat gimp does not need coffee. Yes. The silence is here. Coffee. Put more cans in the fridges. Put the knives away in the kitchen, should you stab yourself on impulse.
When home I get as drunk as possible. The fat maggot with yellow teeth.
Banish the world.
Nothing these past few weeks, leading to nothing. Not a grain of sand has moved. The flecks of shit on the prow of the boat are in the exact same position. Row like a somnambulist. Pull a few faces now and then.
03:46
03:58
Whitespace. White plasm. Burnt matches of words and the moment of failure - failure on all levels. Yes, I saw her in the wheelchair with her father. I saw my own father on the bridge before he died. It is 04:03 and I can taste the garlic and coffee. Look up and face the last few weeks. The Robin flits around on the branches and lands on the fence, silhoutted against the lit mist. I say hello my friend and try to lift myself; look bravely at myself and these recent few weeks. I can put my fingers in the time and pull it apart like watery dough.
Madman, thou errest: I say, there is no darkness
but ignorance; in which thou art more puzzled than
the Egyptians in their fog.
- Feste, Twelfth Night
You can say the soul is gone
And the feeling is just not there
Not like it was so long ago.
On the empty page before you
You can fill in what you care
Try to make it new before you go.
- Stringman - Neil Young
Alive or dead.
Too much reality. The other world recedes while you play the game and two hundred levels is not enough. Slaughtering the opposition with airborne archers and dragons doesn't make the nut. Six Peronis a day at five-fifty a pop makes no difference: The experience is always the same. Telepathy doesn't exist and the Astral Plane is out of reach.
I'm off with a cold; buoyed by Ibuprofen and Pseudoephedrine and relief at not being at work. I stocked up earlier with food and diet cokes. The fire is out now. The temperature is neutral. I'm typing in TextPad. Nothing has really happened in weeks. I'm waiting for a miracle; just like everyone else.
I'm still reading Tropic of Cancer...for about the fourth or fifth time. What I do here is parochial by comparison.
Look into the void.
...and what do you see?
Pell mell; chaos; setting the world to rights with knife-missile athames; killing the killers. She stands over me with her bare foot resting on my arm; hidden places: armour-plated; bad things I've done; battles; when I am going to die and why should I be afraid.
How lonely I am and how astounding the failure. Crosses my mind.
Other things. Many things. Too many things but lying in the darkness with the chaos brings some respite, believe it or not. After just 20 minutes I am at the window again quieter, more solemn. The Elder looms over me, grey-brown and bare, but I do not see it.
Nothing; just me at the window smoking...
"Lonely men in shirt sleeves..."
...and this...
"The taxis run across my feet
And my eyes have turned to blanks"
...and this...
...and this - from Miller.
I cast my gaze behind me at the room. Listening to Broadway The Hard Way now for the first time in many years.
"This band is fucking excellent."
"You know, I was just about to say the same thing."
Seventeen years ago. Claremont Road. Patterson was to my left; the stereo was to my right. I wasn't sure if he was asleep. I had to say something. I still remember the lyrics. I can sing along with Dickie's Such An Asshole.
Another day off work tomorrow is in store. The racking cough has set in. Some sleep tonight no doubt. Another day slips by. I can't wait to see what it's like on the outside now.
Sunday again, so soon. No rest for the wicked. I'm reading Tropic of Cancer again and trying to touch base. Yesterday I went back to Egham for the first time in three years. I took some photos. I had to pop into The Happy Man. To my astonishment Dave was behind the bar and back in charge. He's been there 18 months apparently. (I remember him running the place 19 years ago).
Infinite are the mercies of God.
I had three pints of Summer Lightning. It was kept; hand pulled. £2.40 a pint and quite fucking superb, excuse my French. The menu boards are back. Infinite is the mercy of God. The Man is back. Selah and Hallelujah.
Seems there is a shortage of Dope. No worries. I'm being careful with myself, biding my time.
Henry has me again. Starvation, whores and false teeth. What more could you ask for?
On we go. Take care of yourselves folks. The land is swimming with beer.
"Excuse my vulgarity."
- Ratso Rizzo
Back to work tomorrow. I've just had three days off. Tomorrow is my poke in the ribs and this here is my squawk.
I've been living like a pig, doing nothing but drinking and eating and playing patience over and over. Last night was the last night. I had a massive takeaway, enough for six people probably, from Miss Siam - and finished it for breakfast this morning. I have decided to give up eating for a while, at least until I start to lose it. It's working well at the moment. I have no appetite. My belly feels big and full and I'm looking forward to feeling drunk with hunger. I've stocked up on pain killers after nearly running out two days ago. I was lucky enough to find two Nurofen in the drugs box; amazing foresight. I took a couple of Alka-Seltzer XS - the Cava of pain killers - about 20 minutes ago. My teeth taste stale. Only a matter of time before I am back at the dentist. Time for a break already. Here are a couple of photos; the Pentax 110 Super in the local from a few days ago and me right now...
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So much for that.
I feel the rush on; the anticipation of creating shapes out of the darkness. We move office tomorrow. Venti Cappuccino in the morning and a ton of emails. A steady state of readiness and being reliable. People say things to me and I say things back; all without being terrified or falling apart and confessing; one long fuck you to the cold panic and despair - and the voices of course. Cunts. Sometimes I miss them though.
I'm tripping out now when I lie in bed and close my eyes. There is nothing to be done but cast myself into an ocean of random thought. It's pure jamming and psychodrama. I have no idea where it will lead me - although it always seems to end in failure. At one point in the last 36 hours I woke myself up by screaming silently - my face contorted in a reflex action. Once I close my eyes and throw myself onto the waves I am asleep but awake at the same time. There seems to be no difference in the chaos of reflection and fantasy asleep or awake. I feel as though nothing has happened in years.
I was in the pub last night when the mobile rang. I had it in my pocket, by chance, and left the table to field the call. It was a young student from Royal Holloway calling alumni to ask for money for some beneficiary fund. I knew she had been trying to contact me for weeks, but I am difficult to reach.
We talked. I explained that I was in no position to make any contributions; I was still paying off my student loan - eight years after graduation. She was nice and I strung her out for some time. I asked her what the Happy Man was like these days - mentioning that it seemed to have gone down hill a few years ago. She told me that the Holly Tree was a good pub - recently refurbished and popular. She told me that she was studying English and Drama and I mentioned how highly regarded the drama department is; that it had a reputation for being progressive many years ago. She agreed and told me that it was ranked third in the country.
I told her that I had been to Royal Holloway twice and the first time I had been expelled. She found this amusing and told me that I was the first person she had spoken to who had been expelled. We chatted and I told her how I felt things had changed over the years - between the eighties and the nineties. I said that I couldn't be quite sure, because I was so much older the second time, but I felt that the demographic (I used that word - demographic - twice) of the students had changed. More people had more money. More people left for the weekend. More people had cars - and good ones at that. Fewer people wanted to get involved. People had a good time in the past. But I was young. There were squats. She updated my contact details. I wished her luck and I went back to my beer.
Tomorrow then. Roughly twelve hours to go. Reel into the main road, buy a coffee and smoke a cigarette down Church Street, throwing it down the drain by St Mary's. Assume the position and crank up Outlook. Drink my coffee while I work through the mail. Move my things to the new office. I only have three boxes.
"For exploratory purposes we will now tentatively adopt my "working
assumption," later described in detail, that humans are present on Spaceship
Earth only because they have an ultimately-to-become-operative, critical function
to perform in Universe - a function of which humanity, in general, is as yet
almost totally unaware."
- Buckminster Fuller
Good old army bullshit this week. The environment breaks down the personality and all you are left with is the black curtain when you close your eyes at night. Sometimes you can make out shapes and colours, but a dark void is more comforting. You organise the week, putting the bad things in boxes and placing them out of site. You catch yourself griping - out for revenge. Who is this maniac? Panic stations. Banging your head against the wall like a trapped polar bear. Prometheus bound. An avenging angel with wings removed.
Fuck the job, and welcome to the silence act. Give nothing. For a long time I've been smiling at most of them as you would smile at a lunatic in an asylum. The warm, polite smile which places them at a distance. The unreal smile of the nurse or orderly. It is a smile which says I am right and cause no trouble.
I am wrong though. I am always wrong. I wrong right now. My mind should be dancing like a Shaman's. I've opened the Graham's. Perhaps I will realise, when the noise of the bullshit stops, that I, like you, am an expression of the universe, a symptom of life born out of this planet. Forty years may be nothing, but so might 13.7 billion. Take time out of the equasion and you have a steady state; pure death maybe. Time kills us and also gives us life - growth, movement. But in maybe two hours you can submit yourself to revelation. This is supercharged growth and movement.
You can see that I am lost.
Now Graham's with Cragganmore, in lieu of Port and Brandy. Like the old days in Butts Farm - when I would make strong instant coffee loaded with sugar and aspirin. Long before that I would hide in cardboard boxes, hide in the airing cupboard, hide in a sleeping bag. Dream Time is more advanced now; more chemically sophisticated. Even the Blu Tack has a role to play...In the search for happiness.
I'm still sober though. I'll read a little Valis then turn the light out and look into the void.
See what's there.
"What's a drunken man like, fool?
Like a drowned man, a fool and a mad man: one draught above heat makes him a fool; the second mads him; and a third drowns him."
- Olivia and Feste in Twelfth Night
Few thoughts this night. Just the sweet powerful taste of Maker's Mark on my tongue and another Peroni every twenty minutes to cool me down and clear the palate. It was a bad week, dealing with a succession of difficult people and situations on autopilot; a nothing. Wednesday morning, on my way to training, I see a young child on crutches, the kind with multiple legs trifurcating at the bottom, standing and shifting awkwardly outside Waitrose and smiling with joy at what was probably her father.
This was a salutary moment, but the week was dominated by, as I say, bad situations; rooms full of people who didn't seem to give a damn what I was saying, checking their emails, surfing the web, lecturing me on good business practice. Another day a queer, glorified desk-jockey with OCD put his hands down his trousers and stroked his bollocks and cock - looking at me with a detached, surreal and baleful gaze. It summed up my week; a restless sleep that took me closer to a current of death and further from life. That sounds bad doesn't it? It could be worse. It can always be worse. I've taken my Stelazine. I've tidied the room. The fan is off and the night lights are burning. There is no future here and no hope. The chance of me moving myself, moving you, seems remote. The white space stretches out before me.
But the booze flows freely and so do the words for the moment. I find I can swim and when I flail it will end if I just look up or the water flows sensuously into what's left of my lungs and I drift out of this world. Goddess help me this night; I am made of straw. A dry voice whispering rambling nothings. For all I know, it has always been thus.
You must understand; my mind is screwed: Lack of sleep, preoccupation with trivia, fantasy and petty politics. Bad food, out of breath, dreams I cannot remember. I must find the source. I would do anything now...
Another Peroni sits by my side. How many is that now? Time for more of the Mark. He sucked on the bottle but the bottle sucked from him. I drink to you. And stop. And think. Stop Chris, please stop and gather yourself up...
One bottle of Peroni left and then we are on to the Seirra Nevada Pale Ale and plenty more of the Mark to go. Typing is difficult but the Long Haul is in sight.
"...She's always gone too long..."
"...ain't no sunshine when she's gone..."
This is Deckard. The mechanism is blown.
"...and this house just ain't no home..."
...
And the fool shall look to the madman...
It's the morning now. Sleep and dreams. Theme of cars. Me using a small button - like a tyre valve cap - to drive a Capri from the back seat and cracking one off at the same time. This shocked some other commuters until I pulled the blinds down. A second-hand car dealership; vans driving by my window and parking on the dead ground between me and the boathouse.
I forgot the clocks went back last night. I went out earlier than usual and took some photos. Here are two...
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I came back and slept again, well.
Wondering what is going on inside my head. This is from Valis...
"Journal entry #37. Thoughts of the brain are experienced by us as arrangements and rearrangements - change - in a physical universe; but in fact it is really information and information-processing which we sunstantialize. We do not merely see its thoughts as objects, but rather as the movement, or, more precisely, the placement of objects: how they become linked to one another. But we cannot read the patterns of arrangements; we cannot extract the information in it - i.e. it as information, which is what it is. The linking and relinking of objects by the brain is actually a language, but not a language like ours (since it is addressing itself and not someone or something outside itself)."
Dream on then. Sing and dance. A change of season this coming week and darker evenings coming quickly. I see the fool sitting at his desk with the machine. There was a time when I didn't work. I remember. Sitting on benches in the cold winter air; ice crystals in the air; moving ghost-like through balmy evenings by real people drinking and talking; falling asleep in libraries; writing letters I would never send: This from one: "Is it that we have said everything or have we not even begun to speak?" I was no flaneur: I marked out a territory in my life.
Sing and dance and open like a flower - find the time even when the graft is on. Feel no fear.
"I am Richard II, know ye not that...In those days force and arms did prevail; but now the wit of the fox is everywhere...and scarcely a virtuous man to be found."
Queen Bess said that. And Michael Wood said: "A tale of someone's life begins before they're born."
On one level, nature is pitiless. Everything which lives is either killing or being killed. So the giraffe eats the young and tender shoots but is prey to the lion or the poacher or the blowfly or the tick. So this gimp in urburbia kills the spiders, flies, fleas and the fat gimp with 14 plugs in the room and the fan on day and night for white noise and no count of media players kills the world with heat death and paralysis. They told me to do it and I believed them. What would the Shwim Shwam Caboodle make of it, I ask myself? The Great Woomeram would probably say it was bad - but fuck them and him.
I've seen the backlit Chartreuse and thought of you, Henry: Those Paris nights with Perles and Cendrars. The brightly-lit city is my life. The shadows glow. It's another dream. Bring it down.
Terminal bloat. Big food seems the way forward. Wine too. And Peroni. Fishcakes and steak pie. 2002 Glorioso Rioja. Not as good as the Masi and not much cheaper. Ardbeg.
Things have been happening but it seems like another life. Like Midway, the special effects are absurd: Planes with no bombs or torpedoes, bad stock footage and unconvincing rear projections: Mr Idiot and his day at work. Mr Idiot gets a take-away. Mr Idiot goes to the beer festival...ad infinitum. Who is this dumb guy - and why is the acting and the script so bad?
Actually, it's not so bad - compared to the idiots running the show. They've blown a trillion and killed upwards of 600,000 people - maybe more - for no reason whatsoever. No reason. It seems to be getting worse - with Congress passing the Military Commisions Act recently and this country moving towards ID cards and giant databases.
When will people wake up? At what stage do we take to the streets en masse?
Big questions for such a little man.
And it becomes warmer every year. I'll be cooked alive next year; broiled in my own fat, marinaded in my own farts and washed down with my own piss. Quel repas! Bon appétit!
But I move forward comforted with the knowledge that perry is the best laxative in the world. There are good blogs to read and the eXile rolls on. I have ideas too. I have an action plan...
A filler there. The room is clean, the night is mild and the Ardbeg sits by my side - but I cannot face it now. My belly is still full to paralysis.
Play the cards then and hope for the best. Dream madly of escape.
A poor collection from the last few weeks. Dreams of flooded tents and hidden magical realms at war beneath the ground. Drink - drink every day - and big meals to aid sleep. Work, work every day, one way or another. Fleas in the room, biting me at night, but they are all dead now. Kingdom of Fear and the story of The Judge. Dermaphoria by Craig Clevenger. The Lion In Winter over and over, never reaching the end. Apocalypse Now and the opium sex in the French plantation. Mpegs of naked Tantric massage. Terence McKenna - The Earth Trust recordings - and again the mushroom-tainted theory of evolution - the potted version. I thought at one stage I could summarise the position; write an essay of sorts. Background? Dietary exploration following forced migration onto the plains of Africa. Mushrooms give better visual acuity and increase sexual proclivity. A million years of getting loaded: In that time we develop language, theatre, dance, symbolic representation and, probably, religion. Then it all goes to hell. The mushrooms dry up. Social patterns change. Agriculture. Surplus. We revert to the male-dominator style and fuck everything up.
I'm too much of a cynic to believe that there was ever a Golden Age. I remember back to Ronald Hutton's book - The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles - and the dissing of Gimbutas and Murray. More so; the fragmentation - between both era and region. Too much of a cynic to believe that it's been anything but shit, generally, always. Killing, corruption, compromise, lies, manipulation, lice and tapeworms. It just gets worse the further back you go (or the further away you get from Middlesex, Frankfurt, California etc). There never was the One Way I fear. Where you have variation you will always have evil. Evil will always be in conflict with good. And ninety per cent of people are fools - willing to trade in their minds for some kind of equilibrium. Whether you like it or not, that is the way it is: Catholic, Muslim, Baptist, Buddhist, Communist, Conservative: Sell up, lock stock and barrel; align yourself with the righteous. The BigSkyMan will be on your side. Whether you like it or not, that is most people. Metaphors and money; most of the time that's all the reason you need to send your boys to war, again and again.
Rant over. I'm losing the plot, and not just here. I'm Pink from The Wall.
And you find your way to nothing, by degrees. It's right that we should make the most of the space. I'm right here. It is the weekend. The fan blows on me. I feel bloated. I am in debt. My country is at war. I go back to work on Monday. I am alive. I am privileged. I am white. I am an Anglo. I am a man. Back to basics. I'm here by surprise; and this is a forward escape.
Slow down and think. Do as you please.
I'm back now from the window. I had a smoke and cracked open a beer. Pamela came to mind but I feel like a different man.
- I see you can hardly have taken care of the business we discussed.
- No need to rub it in, Mr. Grady. I'll deal with that situation as soon as
I get out of here.
- Will you indeed, Mr. Torrance? I wonder. I have my doubts. I and others have
come to believe that your heart is not in this, that you haven't the belly for
it.
- Just give me one more chance to prove it, Mr. Grady. It's all I ask.
- Your wife appears to be stronger than we imagined, Mr. Torrance, somewhat
more resourceful. She seems to have got the better of you.
- For the moment, Mr. Grady, only for the moment.
- I fear you will have to deal with this matter in the harshest possible way,
Mr. Torrance. I fear that is the only thing to do.
- There's nothing I look forward to with greater pleasure, Mr. Grady.
- You give your word on that view, Mr. Torrance?
- I give you my word.
About 24 hours have passed since I started this. After the smoke I crashed out
looking for escape. Not much came. I played the cards and lost over and over.
Earlier I thought I may have come to embrace Chaos or Quantum theory (I was
unsure), but then realised that Quantum theory, although placing the role of
the observer centrally, never factors in the feelings of the observer. All that
happened in a few seconds.
I'm lost now, lost as can be. I have the suspicion that during the day, during
my working life, I am acting like a hysteric. I am becoming less and less sure
of my role; in the wider sense.
(We did some last minute work on the new Intranet on Monday and switched it
on late in the afternoon, after most people had left for the day. The following
day the response was overwhelmingly positive and I felt good to be part of the
team. Wednesday came and went. Thursday three of us attended an award ceremony
- one for the team and one for me personally for training and support. There
were 85 awards dished out to various staff. The food was good and the booze
was free. The following lunchtime we threw our launch party and tomorrow I am
going to another gig with the mayor at Richmond Bridge).
As I say, I've been getting caned every night, probably the best way...but it's
bad gear; too wearying perhaps; or perhaps the thought of a long winter; more
debt; no progress; no love, dare I say...well; it's a grim prospect. I may not
have that long. I should throw caution to the wind now and play my hand - and
punt everything I have.
I tried speaking in my head last night, trying to develop a monologue or better, a conversation. So much easier when you lie in your tent listening to the real and semi-real voices in the cool night. You need that surreal crepuscular zone to achieve maximum effect. This room, on the other hand, is my cell. As I fought my mental instinct I still achieved little. I tried to record my thoughts and turns of phrase. Nothing survived; only a dim recollection; of some conceit. Now the rhythm is here again though, and some similar state of mind.
Early evening on the platform at Bicester North dirty with rucksack Japanese tourists eyeing me for some reason but then eyeing everything. Nan's ashes going into a hole in the ground. The look of deferential embarrassment on her face when she came into the room and over for an awkward chat. Nights in tents. Whispering. A paper bat. Snippets of conversation...
"We've been keeping Chris up all night."
"He had a big bushy beard; a real one too."
"He is living with the faeries."
"Let it go Mike."
"I'll come over and give you some tips."
"I'll trim you for five."
"Look at you."
"What are we going to do with the home page then?"
On. Mostly moments of distraction and displacement. A real rhythm of work and intoxication and often both but with this here, which doesn't qualify as work or intoxicated work but rather intoxicated play. Actually, no. It feels like business, like a workout, like essential repairs. Something last night. Freedom - something. All I've got.
You come to the end of a line and it hits you. I dreamt the CAP-5 kicked in on the amp. Other dreams - yes, I forget them now.
There is the time in the line, you see. This is the quick rhythm. Then there is the paragraph or better, the area shot. This is the baseline. You step back and look at the preceding lines, then the succeeding ones. Writing and checking. But more, much more, trying to reassure yourself that there is a point in going on.
I may try to pray to the Goddess. Perhaps if I went down on her...
Talk in the head? Assume the position of the Hanging Man? Retire to the tower, or some art deco u-boat?
Perhaps. We move towards dangerous times. The war in Afghanistan is being lost too (Brecher has spoken). Good|people have gone. Some fall. I concede the point that the war now is against religion - again. So prayer may not be appropriate.
That be the muster tonight. More bad business. Back to the pipe.
Facts then. Unravel reality...
Facts...facts, facts. You lose sight of the idea that you are a gimp in history. If we survive one day we may conquer time itself. Maybe we will let all the dead free.
That's in the future though; a time when we will seem like chimps; every thought skewed and shallow. How does that notion sit with you?
Some people like chimps though.
Steady on Lighty. You are back home now, back home from The Clubhouse and fed with casserole, Masi Campofiorin 2003, Diet Coke and a bag of dust. It's all good. I even had the reassuring thought that with book titles like mine I could never be the victim of celebrity. And I know now that should I get lung cancer there is no point in fighting. Blair is on his way out. So is George. We will lose the war in Iraq, in Afghanistan and the IDF will never beat Hezbollah. The shit will hit the fan, the fat will be in the fire, the chickens will come home to roost, the balloon will go up. Defcon 1. We will have a situation.
Seems safe here though. Next week looks interesting. Need to get the camera clean. If I can just keep going for another few years...
I've been round the sun 40 times now. That's something. I also know now not to ask a man his trade, to keep an open mind, and to mind my own business. There are many cards in the deck and one hand washes the other.
That's right; the mechanism has gone. You are now in the forest of dreams. Bring on the dope-smoking festival chicks.
Two aborted attempts to write something here. That is my story. Earlier...
"Truth may seem, but cannot be:
Beauty brag, but 'tis not she;
Truth and beauty buried be.
- The Phoenix and the Turtle
Dig for them then. And cut yourself some slack Bill. When they put you in a box Truth and Beauty stayed free. No-one takes them to the grave; and our thoughts turn dark easily. It's part of the game.
Facts then."
Facts indeed.
Took these earlier. I'm no photographer...and this was all I was good for.
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Photos from yesterday. New lens.
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Last page of notes from Womad...Friday, 28 July...
First shift over
9.33 Oxfam Tent. Night shift. It went well. 9 women, 2 men. Handed over to Justin.
STILL NO MUSIC ON FM
HEAT IS ON AGAIN.
SLEEP IMPOSSIBLE
CURRY, SMOKES & BEER FOR BREAKFAST
BLOW YOUR LOAD
SPILLAGE IS GOOD
The notes for The Green Man are even more mundane less meretricious. I was interested in photography and watching music, a rare thing for me.
I left home last Wednesday at 9.45am and arrived at the Glanusk Estate in someone's car just after 4. We camped under the backdrop of the Black Mountains with plenty of room. My first shift was due to start at 8 the following morning. After touring the site and talking with a few people I retired early and rested easy on grass and beer.
Shit went down at work - good and bad - usual thing. I met people again. Early one morning, as I was having breakfast looking over the main stage, an attractive woman came over and asked if she could have a chat with me. We talked for a while, about various things, and she left. She told me that she was now tired of Glastonbury, especially after Brown Friday last year. I told her that she was wrong, that it was the most amazing place in the world, and that she should try to get there next year. She left on good terms, only slightly uncomfortable with me I sensed, and half agreeing.
It was a good time. The site was beautiful and the crowd tame and friendly. No gangs of thieves. Overcast skies and cool nights.
Overheard quote of the weekend: "How many pills have we got left?"
And back on a train from Oxfordshire, my detoured itinerary, moving through London and back to Twickenham. Unfriendly faces. Fear of engagement. Back to reality and work and at a loss where to go. Strange funk, this. Minor events - random jamming - uncertainty. More photo work. New lens. Digital voice recorder. Big Amazon order. Birthday money. Drink on Friday with many sub-plots.
Life ticking over again, so quickly. Should I see a pigeon I think nothing. Same exchange in Starbucks every morning. Same coffee. The deal is to get ripped at every available opportunity without jeopardising the job - with this acting as a filler. Not so bad; there is Oxfam too and the festivals...islands of light...if only I could do them justice. How better it is to be there; how much nicer to sleep free with a guitar in the night, session sounds and singing - and distant bass thumping.
But now what the hell do I do? Reprocess my trivia into art?
You have symbols on a screen that represent a written language ordered in sequence. Sequence is important - the most important thing of them all; so you start at the beginning and finish at the end. You try to throw a curve between those two points. How you do that is a mystery to me.
Drinking Innis and Gunn oak aged beer. I recommend it chilled. It has a fine taste of whisky and oak.
Night time. Nearly three. No voices. Only the sound of the fan. No walking in the night here. The fat maggot makes his way back to his box before sundown and sucks on drugs until his brain begins to vibrate at a certain frequency. Dreams only get in the way. In other words; despite everything there is nothing. It's the Matrix. Even if you blow your head off there is no escape.
Here and there cannot work. Not for me. The Goddess, if she existed; or if we invented her; might be pure chaos: You would speak to her and sometimes she would listen, sometimes not. Sometimes she would be near, sometimes far. Sometimes you may drink at her tit, sometimes she might burn you alive. That's the Goddess anyway. I have no idea what she looks like. It probably changes all the time.
Nan died last week, in the early hours of Tuesday morning I think. I believe I was the final one in the family to know. It hit us quite hard. The last death I remember was my Father's, nearly 20 years ago.
Work went badly and on Friday I cleared out at around 5.30 for my celebratory drink. It was OK, until the end, and then it turned into a nightmare. I found myself suckered into a late dinner with two women friends and three drunken big earners who bragged about their boats and million pound deals and houses - with the most pissed idiot so soused he was unable to speak without shouting. Flecks of his spittle landed on my arm and presumably on my food. I believe we cleared the restaurant, despite the performance of the chief prick, who acted the part of the man about town, the man of culture, the man who knows his place and everyone else's. He played his friends like stooges and they tried to play him back. That was the trope and it was all they knew. Round and round the conversation went for hour without anyone saying anything. I sat there in silence and left when I had made the most of my Dansak...
'Are we boring you?' the chief asked.
'No. I've got a splitting headache. I've been drinking since twelve-thirty.'
Which was true - I had. Fullers Honeydew, London Pride, Twickenham Spring Ale, Budweiser, Sambuca and Jack Daniel's. I had drunk myself sober though. The other five - the two women and the three stooges - had got to the restaurant before me. I was gripped with the instinct to head for home on my way there. I should have run with it: I should have cut my losses. On the way down a pissed co-worker walking with me saw anger in my eyes. He had fired on all cylinders and had earlier talked about my writing - maybe the first person to mention it to my face in 10 years or more - outside of Justin. I should have read the signs. I should never have gone into that joint.
When I finally made it home I found I had the trots.
People had been generous. I had a lot of gifts. It was very nice of them. There was one particularly beautiful woman at the party and I took a good photo of her.
And that's me dead in the water. Depth-charged to the surface and a sitting duck for Wooden Wonders or Whispering Death. At least I can sit here and string a sentence together. That one was over five inches long.
Sirens through the town even now; on Sunday night. We are nation of drinkers and we act like idiots.
22.22. Just for now.
I did a spell check and a little kiss landed on my lips from the ether. Where did that come from? - tell me that and I will confess everything.
A final word to say goodbye. Closure is important it seems - the moment of relief. You escape me then and come back to yourself. I leave you with this.
"I don't believe thought can be located in the brain. I think the brain is an amplifier and an antenna for something that is everywhere: that the phrase 'my thought' is a complete misnomer. You don't own thoughts. You don't generate them. All you do is tune into an ocean of thought in which we're embedded."
Terence McKenna - Earth Trust, part 3 of 4
I got back from Womad on Monday. It was good, in a sense, but it wasn't Glastonbury.
I met with some fellow boarders in the afternoon and spent a couple of hours
chopping vegetables and Garlic for the evening meal. We broke for a briefing
in the Rivermead centre - all 400 of us.
The boarders meal went down well. Our hosts had prepared to cook two big-pan curries for 30 people. A chat was served, naan, and deep-fried pakoras. Powerful cocktails were dished out in plastic cups. The food was excellent. A storm came, lightning flickered around us, a plastic bat fluttered from a pole in my field of vision and I gave up my borrowed umbrella and let the rain fall on me.
The heat during the day was frightening, but my first shift was on Thursday night. I was 'Zone One supervisor Chris' - trying to help about 15 stewards in my area to do their job. I got down there an hour early to get a better feel for the patch - mostly campervans and car parks. Two fire observation towers (later three when the overflow camping was used). Some static positions and mobile patrols.
Two more shifts and strung-out and drunken tours of the site. I didn't see a single gig. I ate from Nuts - last year's superb vegan caterer - and for the first time the amazing Pieminister. I'll be seeing these pie people again, the very next chance I get. Expensive, but the heartiest festival food I've ever had. It's quite obscene.
I'm guessing I did OK. To the best of my knowledge there were no major cock-ups on my part (whereas there was a definite one at Glastonbury last year which still haunts me - and will for a long time).
So I kept it together. And, perhaps, took another step forward. A tan on my face and arms (too afraid to bear my chest and legs). More faces I have forgotten. More people I have worked with and who have relied on me. Another experience in the bank and £50,000 raised for Oxfam - my employer - for our services. We did good; and we are getting better. The Green Man in a couple of weeks.
And flag shot. Photoshopped.
I was back to work on Tuesday. The week went badly. I hadn't taken any medication since before the festival and I had half a mind to stop altogether. By Friday I was feeling really rough and had to leave The Clubhouse early - still afraid of falling over after two pints. I took a tablet later that night. The weekend saved me.
No stories. No novel. Just a push to fill a gap here when I can. My life is on hold and often I lash out randomly and stupidly - as you can probably tell. The head moves towards the arse reflexively. Every now and then you have to put your shoulders back straight and play like the normal people.
Preparations underway for Womad. I leave next Wednesday in 34c and bad humidity. Sorted some stuff out today: Cutlery set, plate, insulated mug, Platypus, air bed plugs, spare tent pegs, paracord, sun block, Boony hat, wets, Witchdoctor, reefer tubes, hip flask, festival watch ...etcetera. I'm working there on my own.
Fireworks outside. Music at Marble Hill. The climax comes now at 10. In good time for a few of the more adventurous punters to make a quiet pub like The Clubhouse, The Eel Pie or more likely The White Swan and The Barmy Arms. No big trade I imagine. Most of the Marble Hill clientele will be sated on New World wine and deli items from Marks and Spencers and Waitrose. It's an alpha-class consumer demographic with no time for smoky pubs and the smell of beer. They buy their bric-a-brac from Past Times and tea from Whittards. Smoking a cigarette at the concert could be a faux pas. The only smell of dope around here is coming from my window - a good 600 metres away.
There is a breath of wind, tenuous, barely moving the tips of the Elder. I was hoping this band of humidity would roll over like a wet cloth, wiping the heat off us as it heads East.
It is slightly cooler. A light and misty rain at 6 this morning. Beer at 11, curry, the Glastonbury film again and a light spring clean.
I favour the list you see; as Henry did; and the Marble Hill stuff was straight out of The Great Shark Hunt - the opening of the eponymous story no less.
Have you ever thought of inventing your own university? It was Milton, I think, who set his own syllabus after graduation and followed it for some years with the plan to become the greatest poet of all time (and there are some serious people that think he is).
How strange it is to read a book because you must - and then write about it. There is something wrong with education but I cannot isolate it. Perhaps a confluence of experiences with bad tutors, boring syllabi, materialistic students, an uncaring bureaucracy.
What to do though - that's the rub. Follow your instinct?
Reveal yourself again and again in more and more elaborate ways.
That came to me suddenly whilst wincing at the screen.
People that interest me: My teachers if you like...
Henry Miller
Terence McKenna
Hunter S. Thompson
Philip K. Dick
William Shakespeare
And there the list ends. Nearly all Americans, you see? All in trouble with the law and at least three of them into drugs heavily.
The rest is scraps: Some Knut Hamsun (Mysteries), some Science Fiction. No women, outside of bloggers. I've read Plath, Stein, Shelley, Behn, Austen, the fragments of Sappho, Woolf, Morrison, Acker and Le Guin. None of them interested me. Perhaps I am drawn to the Apollonian. I read the classics in translation and always thought it a crime. I got closer with Beowulf, Sir Gawain and The Green Knight and Chaucer. The Miller's Tale is one of the best things written, and the Morality Mankind surprised me. The Mysteries were essential - in every sense of the word.
After Shakespeare and Marlowe and the Metaphysical Poets the next three hundred years are a loss to me. Pepys begins to write and so does Defoe. Men of commerce, administration and practical religiosity. Bastards, in other words. Tristram Shandy didn't interest me, although I found Fanny by Gaslight entertaining.
I missed out on the French and most of the Russians. It really begins for me with Dostoevsky, Hamsun, Eliot, Joyce and divine Henry Miller.
They lead the fall into the sixties from the 1920s (with the intervention of total world war and a paranoid nuclear stand-off with all the small fry being tossed as seal pups are by killer whales) and the New Hope. You could almost believe in the idea of a deeper revolution - as you do when you smoke dope and chat with strangers at Glastonbury.
Anyway, what should I do now to move forward? Somebody once asked a French author how one learns how to write and his reply was "By writing!"
I'm stuck on stories though. Distant memories and the day-to-day are all I have.
Feelings.
I hosed the fan down earlier with the shower - the grille and the blades that is. It blows strongly now but the air feels wet. Ice melts in a cool box on the floor and it is time to be silent again and watch the life from the shadows. Free your mind for a moment.
[Pause]
I tried a few things at the window smoking an American Spirit cigarette. Mostly rolling over the recent past and thinking I should deal with that because, if nothing else, this is my current situation and it might help me to cope with it. I gave up, and then it occurred to that I needed something before the cigarette was finished. Then I found myself writing those very words in my head (with the quick mind words that every writer must use).
Free your mind for a moment.
I might sleep better tonight. I sleep with two pillows, cuddling one, and in this weather propped up against the bunched-up duvet as if it was another person. In normal weather I sleep with two duvets for this very purpose. I used to imagine that I was snuggling up to a particular woman - many different women over the years - but now it is no woman, any woman, no particular woman who is probably with another man or would recoil if I laid a hand on them. This is dreamtime; looking into the future.
I nailed it yesterday. It was a close run thing but suddenly I had the opportunity to open a third front and then a breakthrough anyway and it all went down by the end of the day. Training in the morning and a tender moment with a beautiful woman who told me lovingly to stop saying I was sorry. When I got back home I found that I had a response to my letter to Andrew Motion - the current Poet Laureate. It was a hand written note on a compliments slip telling me to apply for the MA in the usual way. I have no idea who wrote it.
Another seminal moment.
Later in the evening I blew my head clean off with crystalline buds and lay on the bed not feeling the heat and ruminating on recent events, distant memories, star formations, Johnny Rotten and foreskins. I was too zoned-out and dry to have one off the wrist: I drifted in and out of deep funks and kicked up waves at some skewed source of creativity. My mind plummeted and soared erratically - but chaos reigned (or pure gullibility) and I remembered little of what had seemed so amazing. It was too much and too soon. I have eased off: Woken yet again to find myself reeling back in the cave and seeing the former exteriors as shadows on the wall. This is Plato's cave, of course. It is a bad business - as the Doctor might have said, or you dirty fucking cunt - as Johnny might have said.
The thread of doing an MA began to unwind on another blog - a friend, of sorts, with a burning desire to pick up a BA. Good luck to her, I thought. The line I took was that the most important thing was to know the process - the game - for itself. It was the Not Knowing that was the killer. Forget the knowledge as such (and what there is of it). I mentioned the idea of me going in the ring again in later years. It could be my swan song, I said cheerily - assuming the mange doesn't get me and reality deals me an average hand - for a white man.
Strange, but I got to thinking it might help right now; I mean, next year. It occurred to me that it might distract my attention and stimulate a move to bigger pieces. I entertained the thought of swanning around Bedford Square; maybe spark up a friendship with a smart woman and impress her with my soul. It seemed an achievable thing too. I would be doing what I loved anyway - and living in a Harry Palmer movie.
But now I lay on the bed and flogged my ego. The last rational thought I had was the realisation, yet again, that the bad learning was all over and done. It was just a ruse anyway: Mostly a chance to change my lifestyle for three years; nothing more. Now you do what you love. On your own.
Then I dreamed about writing another letter; a long and rambling raving in a new language. I wanted to pulsate between narrative, thought, conversation and direct address. Dealing with the recent past presented a particular challenge. I found myself talking in parables and nonsense to describe it.
So much for this nothing. The summer heat is a big danger. The pros tell us to be wary of it.
More photos. Good to look at when you are stoned. Not much else. Watched the Julien Temple film last night and dreamt of Glastonbury. Major dream. I am fighting the enemy (boredom) on two fronts; waiting for a victory.
When I wrote that last piece I edited out a swear word before it was published. That got me thinking about swearing and I checked the archives. Too much over the last 6 months. Things must have been bad. I edited out about 50% (I'm guessing) from January to June posts.
Bad repetition and stylistics. Another lesson learned.
London Summer.
Too much to process at the moment. Dreams and days at work slip by seamlessly. In checking the stats I see the referral 'mostly memories.' That's right, mostly memories. Memories and dreams...and RSI all down my right arm. After 10 minutes at the machine the pain becomes unbearable. Two more days off work to rest now. I have about 40 new photos to post but it's physically unachievable. I'm on the laptop, merciful Christ, and if it wasn't for the pain I would be writing nothing now. I would be making pages double-a, changing images, tweaking forms, messing around on-line. There is no on-line with the laptop, only the possibility of rigging a dial-up to a paranoid corporate network. I am happy like this though: There is no pain, touch wood.
It's true, old friends reside in my memory and my dreams and The Now is one big nothing, not even a storm. The farm in the Vale of Avalon rests this year. Even so I find my thoughts drifting there. The woman I met last year lives on as an event in some key cluster of Dendritic spines between my ears. I wonder if she ever thinks of me. Unlikely, probably. And who am I to say? I'm allowed to contemplate her though, to entertain the possibilities, but never pretend to know anything. There may well be a God, but when you say you know him and have a direct line then you really are washed up. You may be part of a process towards fulfillment, but you are still a living lie.
I remember how my heart almost exploded when she told me how she used to negotiate the site in a crazed state; not knowing where she was, I remember the flowers in her hat, the uneven but beautiful smile, the signs of injury on her legs, the look of intense annoyance when I turned around in my chair in the marquee, having smiled ruefully, thinking that she wasn't going to show. My smile and her indignant anger followed by 20 minutes of misfiring and no conversation and unbearable heat on the tables outside where she had been sitting watching me and probably worrying. I remember her mannish feet and the heady sense of life and determination.
I remember the look of relief on her face when I shook her hand and said goodbye 'to avail myself of the luxury facilities' at the top of the hill. We took the hill slowly. I told her that was the best way. That, and being really stoned. She would have known that though.
"It's been good working with you," I said.
"I'm sure we'll bump into each other again."
I lost sight of her then - she headed back. When I got to the flushing toilets I found a long queue. I made my way back too, hoping she was far ahead of me, out of sight. When I got to the tent I wept.
She's with a man now, probably. She was never with me, it's safe to say, in any way. All well and good. It moved me a little further towards the light and clear waters. I can imagine, now, what it would be like to be obliterated in love, which I could not do before, although it had happened to me many years ago. Thirty years ago to be precise...and that was the last time I so much as kissed a girl.
How could it happen - all this loneliness, this half-life?
The honest answer is that I don't know. Something must have gone wrong somewhere. It's easy to blame myself: I am the only common factor.
I'm 40 next month, which only serves to underscore the failure. When you hit 40 in this way you become a supergimp, I guess. It's an easier thing for people to remark upon. The shame becomes a little darker. Quite a bit darker.
They are there, these people that I knew, in my memories...good times and bad. I dream about them often. Sometimes I even act like them.
Now it seems that I stand alone, having come a long way.
It is not enough to say that today I will be grateful, today I will honour, today I will not worry. There is no doubt about it: I need more dope. More dope and more water. I can win with dope and water - I can succeed. Dope, water and a bad and lazy attitude. Laziness and less paranoia. No need for approval; no twisting open these reality nuggets to examine the insides. The inside of every event, every sentence, every look, phone call, conversation, remark...well, the insides are an impenetrable and inaffable mess best left alone and discarded. To play with these events is to break them. To play with all of them is to court disaster. You'll drive yourself up the wall and your brain will jar and clatter like a printer with a broken toner. When that happens it is best to assume that you are always in the wrong.
Somehow we met with the man. I don't know how. It was organised chaos, Glastonbury 1989, and I was doing no organising. I was right on a nexus - cut loose and as jittery as a fallow deer. My eyes were big and I made a size 32. Everything was taken on spec. I was blown wide open - beyond paranoia. When every single thing becomes laden with significance you rise above the landscape of your life like a burning cinder from a fire. You look down in wonder through the smoke at this one big event below - this one big thing you must interpret - the wave of mystery you are riding.
So we met with the man, let's call him Che, and made off to one of the markets, to meet up with someone called Matt - and that was his real name, as I remember. Matt had set up shop at the back of his van. He had what seemed like a fairly desultory collection of items: Gong related pottery, a handful of fractual posters. The real draw, I guess, was the music he was playing from fridge-sized speakers. It was Early House and like nothing I had ever heard, before or since. People stopped frequently to soak it up and ask about it.
We sat, quite a few of us, in two receding rows from the tent-shop right down to the front of the van. Sometimes a light came on and illuminated us: Two rows of heads, Buddhas, children - floating in space off into infinity. As people wandered by we saw the sight of ourselves catch their eye. Now and then a really wasted person would drift across our field of view and stop in some amazement. One guy I remember: a red-head dragging a sleeping bag. He was smartly dressed, his hair was neatly trimmed, and he looked like a BSc, if anything - one of those neat guys at engineering college into acid and mushrooms and toot. He was thoroughly arseholed - probably acid - and wandered by and then wandered back again. We laughed. I must have felt good, because here was someone more fucked than me. He stood staring at us for a while and we all watched him closely, not least because the conversation was pretty dead. He put his sleeping bag on the ground and layed down in front of us. Matt's girlfriend sallied out and asked him if he needed a place to crash for the night. He didn't seem to understand and after some time, in some mild confusion, he wandered off. Slowly perhaps, so as not to cause too big a ripple.
That is a moment in time which I owe you - it's best and right to say all of you - and a way of jamming on the breaks. This is me getting off the motorway. This is the sun setting after a long and horrible day and you know at last that nothing bad can happen this night - not this night.
Head out of the window for a smoke. A siren moving through the town and inchoate voices in the distance. Let it all go and drift with yourself for a while. The war in the East is lost and the world is falling apart. Turn your back and say goodbye.
Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire
What thou dost foist upon us that is old,
And rather make them born to our desire
Than think that we before have heard them told.
Thy registers and thee I both defy,
Not wondering at the present nor the past,
For thy records and what we see doth lie,
Made more or less by thy continual haste.
This I do vow and this shall ever be;
I will be true, despite thy scythe and thee.
Sonnet 123
This illness and madness pervades us and makes us idiots living in private, unreal worlds.
Philip K. Dick - Valis
Is it that we are fools, including me? Possibly. Every now and then the impulse
rises to apologise, to cover your arse, so to speak. What if you were wrong
all this time - that the energy you generated - and the way you directed it
- was bent and polluted by the trance you found yourself in? Life is a mess:
You go to war for a noble cause and find your boys are raping the natives; you
move into the woods and break both legs in a fall; you work your whole life
for your family and die alone, ignorant of your soul.
But bear this in mind: As far as I know, as far as I can tell, what I have here, these very words no less, are all that I do have. No, that's not true, really, but they are the best of what I have. This is my noble cause. This seems to be my last hope. I'm dying by inches you understand, and my life off of this page seems like a sham. Every year my breath gets shorter, my hair gets thinner, my body gets weaker, flabbier, the debt gets bigger, the failure of being alone gets sadder and more ridiculous, the chance of cancer or a heart attack accrues, my teeth are crumbling.
This is my way out. This is my salvation.
Bear that in mind, if you can.
The last week has been hard, by my standards. Another loan; the big camera out of action. I've been getting drunk every single day for - well, I can't remember. There has been more hotlinking, yet another switcheroo and a whole web site leeched. It was a personal shambles. I'm on Apache now, with htaccess files. There has been a sort of stasis at work. I have felt unproductive. It's a struggle to think of what I have achieved - certainly nothing substantial. My energy has been spent plugging holes to keep back a flood of my own creation. It's been raining every day. Part of this drought we are enduring. I have no faith in the new box. I found 143 invalid ActiveX commands when I ran Norton for the first time. This is besides the fact that I have no idea what I am doing.
Then, there is always the screw you, you bastards, factor. You take the knock and carry on, hoping for a better life. Just when you're on the run, wheel around and engage.
True, people are basically ignorant, but how am I to know that, especially as I am one of them?
And so, what can I get from this past week, ignoring the last post, which was another me?
My friend, not fucking much.
Lordi have won Eurovision. Thank fuck. It is a vindication of piss-takers and fruit bats everywhere. It's a ray of hope; a sign of justice; a right thing; I could go on, and that in itself could tell you more about my state of mind at the moment: Much imbibing, all the good things, including a fal from a 'curry chef of the year,' whatever the blazes that means. Cider, white wine, Cobra, Irish coffee etc
etc etc
And, in a sense, here we go again - and may the goddess shine her light upon me.
I'm in need of a long haul; kick this weekend off. Leave on Monday and just Office, CS, Norton and Acrobat to get on the new box - an XPS600. I sucked tit and ordered with Dell. They screwed it up of course; twice, but I got it and it's a fast machine. Tacky, but fast and powerful. Warcraft is on, and The Frozen Throne, and all the updates. I played a walkover session of Adrenaline earlier. Grabbed the mine early and expanded my Night Elves to the old routine. I got the Keeper of The Grove as the default hero - a lucky break. I followed on with the Priestess of The Moon and then the Demon Hunter. Got a small gang of archers, Druids of The Talon and Dryads together. I shat on the Humans when they broke through to the central mine. Deadly missile fire and a lot of Ancient Protectors hammering the attackers and all my heroes tooled-up with Orbs of Poison and healing potions. I killed a lot of the Undead through the trees and I was level 5 by the time I got round to the Orcs. Then I killed and destroyed everything on the map, apart from the wild boar critters, which explode when you click on them about 50 times and are presumably worth nothing.
I did an audit of the human being that is me as it turns off Wharf Lane into King Street in the morning, with a stop-off at Starbucks for a venti cappuccino. Besides the bloated drunken bastard factor - the stick, the hard drive, the Sennheisers, the laptop, the iPod, the pain killers, the cigarettes, the mouthwash, the money. What a damnable weird sight. And 90 Gigabytes of storage in four different places. Benjamin Britten, 2000 years ago it would have scared the piss out of people.
51 minutes in. Time for a break.
Not bad. I'm drinking Fever-Tree tonic water and I apologise for that. So much and nothing to comment on, apart from Lordi. A flick of the hair, a Downey expression gesture and a stride out of the building moment - a reconstruction of 5,000 or a million moments with an old friend.
Back to dreamtime. Slim down for the counter offensive and head for higher ground.
It seems I'm here again. I'm on a different machine now, hoping that it holds up to the vagaries of my power situation, the electrical substation 30 yards from my desk and the dust in the room, much of which has gone, but it will be back, just like me. I've been going nuts and getting drunk every day. That's no excuse though.
The 19 inch TFT I am using is a piece of shit. I am planning to secure another loan tomorrow and will be buying one of these when the stock is available. Nero never knew such luxury. Welcome to the digital age: Generation Net. I am happy to concede that I am completely fucked, but at least I haven't murdered or raped anyone - yet. Christ, maybe I am a geek after all. Maybe that's why a flash from a PSU from the back of a Coolermaster case and no usable FTP and twenty programs short can send a man so skewed. Maybe.
Thank you, whoever you are, for checking the site now and then. In a way it made it more difficult - without the rolling confessional.
It made it much worse. Do you see what I mean?
OK; so this will be left-handed, in the old tradition.
I got roped in to working on the election after all; a luxury job; pure cheese - and Roquefort at that. I was down at the count just before the action started and snugged down in a little office just off the main hall. I had a RAS connection configured on my laptop and posted the ward results, as they came in, to the corporate web site. I enjoyed it. It was good coin too. The new job has been going well. I can't complain. If I can just hold on...
What else?
Well; dreams. The witches. Distant now. Strong sexual air about the pair. I was in love with one of them. An illicit affair. Boats at night; leaping over them. To drag back the memories is to haul up a black, impenetrable knot from the depths. Just a here and there you can make out a thread. Let the soul fly at night. Good luck to it.
I read The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. I'm reading Valis again now. I invigilated at an exhibition. I went to a craft fair at Kew Gardens. I took some photos. They were so-so. Life goes on. It ain't so bad.
Take care. With much regard.
"Things I would not tell anyone, I tell the public."
- Michel de Montaigne
I am tucked up in bed with my back to the wall. The window is open to my left-rear, the candles are burning and the plainsong is on. Outside is cold and the colour of death; that British grey that saps the colour from everything around it. You naturally avert your gaze from it. I'm going blind anyway from staring at screens 60 hours plus a week, so I find it unbearable. It's the colour and light of nothing - not even dark matter. It's the colour of defeat.
I've got the squints and a permanent frown. I play patience for fictional money, power and women. The game has nearly exhausted itself; I've been gambling on first year profits for the portfolio and the four companies I would own, using some jury-rigged formulae. Remarkably it was the outfit with the least initial investment, an organic, free-range, falafel fast food joint, that made the most during the first 12 months of business - 53 million pounds. I can't account for the discrepancy. My portfolio managed a healthy 12 million; the other three companies between 3 and 4 million. How could a falafel place, even a chain, make so much from a 2 million start-up? I guess the director would have to write a best-selling cook book or something. She's one of my birds of course. A cute, vivacious brunette in her mid-forties with a serious bush. Jessica.
Virginia Bell is in there too (GP), Bridget Monet (one of my PA's), Roberta Pedon (biochemist - you need a good biochemist), Yulia Nova (my lawyer) and, of course, Clyda Rosen (entrepreneur). The list goes on - I won't bore you. It's a hell of an outfit and there is a lot of mad fucking going on.
The elections are coming up. I cried off working as a Presiding Officer this year, even though they offered me the job. I was conscious of the fact that I seemed to be cracking up and falling apart. Too much going on and £250 for another 18-hour marathon was in the same league and jumping into the Italian Fountain to retrieve some small change. A nutty venture, in other words, that would make no difference in the long run. It's death or glory now. No middle way. And I couldn't face another year. Not with two male poll clerks and one of the stations with the hottest turn-outs and most dangerous electorate. No room for fuck-ups at this place. Peter Snow votes there. I've met him twice now. And Chris Patten.
I voted today. Postal vote. I had three votes. I voted Green three times. One of the Labour candidates had the amusing middle name of Wanklyn. They nearly named the Upholder submarine class after a Wanklyn - the best British submarine commander of the war - did you know that? He operated in the Med and caused some major carnage. They named it after his boat though. You cannot have a boat called The Wanklyn. Not in the Royal Navy. We sold them all to Canada and one or two spontaneously caught fire and fell apart. I don't know why. We made good boats after the war. We made good tanks too, and brought in the 105 and the 120, but the engines were shit. We were up against the Commies then. Before that it was the Germans. Before that it was the French, for obvious reasons.
There have been some dreams recently. I normally fall asleep in something akin to a state of despair. Last night, this morning, that is, I was back at Royal Holloway. I had just started and was hanging around a lot of young tyros. They had the lick-down though and I had to keep asking when the first essay was due in. We went out the night before it was due in - onto the roof of our hall and finding a rooftop shortcut to Founders; at night an amazing building. Also amazing in the fading sun on a summer's day.
Those days are gone now, as I have said before; including the days after the days before. Even that second spell seems like another age, another me. Now is the time of the bloated fool: The cracked and aged idiot as layed out by Beckett, a parody of the honnête homme, who symbolises impotence at all levels.
Shit, that's some shit isn't it? It's a bleak business, all of this reality. Do you plan, or just think one step ahead - the Zen way? And how do you call down the moon?
I looked over this laptop screen to the CRT on my desk. Firefox is up with the home page, even though the connection has long since dropped. Soon, probably, this will be there and you, poor bastard, may even read it. This here will be out there. Weird. And slightly contrived, perhaps.
That CRT is about nine feet away, I guess. Here and there - what difference does it make?
Good night and, as always, sincere apologies.
A few photos on a grey day. Couscous for lunch with vine tomatos and red wine and beer. Lots of dreams. Some prophetic. Back later perhaps.
Flowers for the Lady.
I'm safe now, and not to worry. Last week I was going crazy. It was all going tits up: Nightmares, lack of sleep, paranoia, exhaustion. This was no forward escape; panic set in. I was in a dead-end rut and for all I know going bi-polar. Enough already. I'm sitting in bed with the new laptop. It has a gig of RAM and goes like a slippery bitch. I have all of next week off and multiple plans and appointments to sort my shit out - money, body, teeth, room - the whole show. I'm getting a grip, thank fuck, and now I have space to breathe, I think, although I'm still a little edgy.
I hope that's OK.
The situation in Iraq is becoming manifest even to the somnambulists. Gary Brecher, a hero of mine, of sorts, has remained true to form throughout. He is a crazy bastard in many ways - a big fan of total violence - and that's one reason the Neocons have trouble dealing with him. But the main reason he is making the pro-war camp feel uncomfortable is that he rings true and clear whilst they are one of the sorriest, gone-est collections of shrieking and bullshitting arseholes we have had to endure for the last 50 years.
To Gary, war is a way of life; what I mean by that is that he thinks war is part of life - always has and always will be. Cultures that choose to be open and loving are asking to be raped and butchered. The pragmatic reality is that life, nature if you like, is about conflict, killing and death. No room for poets. No room for stoners. They come with soft cultures, fat countries. The winners will always be the ones with the cold and clear will, and the ones most comfortable with organising themselves for extreme violence - and then carrying it out.
I think this is a pretty bleak view. There must be another angle, probably an obvious one, that I am missing. Something to do with the quality of life. The richer your way of life is the more you want to defend it - and at the same time the more you value the lives and the potential of others. It can cut both ways. Soft cultures have fought with passion and belief, occasionally, and when it mattered most.
Then there is the long view - the notion that we find ourselves in an evolutionary process. The notion that for all the bullshit and terror an idea is spreading - although you would never believe it from watching television. Some ornate concept is reaching out perhaps - even into the darkest corners. Things have changed, my friend, over the last 10,000 years, and it's not just that we have better weapons: We have better ideas now, if you want them. A lot of women aren't the cattle they used to be. People are marrying out of love. We are all living longer - generally speaking of course.
So much for Gary on this weekend night and 9 more days to go. I get confused with politics. I get easily confused with just about everything that people claim makes sense.
Good.
I don't really know where to go with this next. I mean, overall. I would like to clear the decks in some way - clean up my life that is - find some equilibrium and write a story. It's a serious propostion, and hard work. I have one or two ideas though.
I'm still edgy. Things are changing. We'll see how it goes.
For, boy, however we do praise ourselves,
Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm,
More longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn,
Than women's are.
- Twelfth Night
You're a fucking child.
- Al Pacino - Glengarry Glen Ross
When I sit here. And try to think. Of the few days past. I hold my head in my
hands.
I have an on-line friend, a woman, who has been having a bad time of things. I lurk on her blog quite a bit and read everything eagerly. I try to cheer her up sometimes, but often I feel impotent.
Some of my photos went on exhibition last week. There was a private viewing on Thursday. I went down there today to have a look again. I took my camera but didn't shoot anything. It rained and I came back home, ate cold cuts and drank wine and beer and woke up a few hours ago with a hangover. I was bored and took some Nurofen and tidied my room.
I got a new work laptop Friday before last. It goes pretty quick.
I have dreamt of Adolf Hitler - he had a vicious dog, and George Clooney as a ragged barbarian commanding a doomed army hiding in caves.
I believe I have halitosis - even though I am brushing what's left of my teeth about six times a day.
I've been stalking a woman I met last year on-line. Don't get the wrong idea - I haven't contacted her in any way - I just lurk on the boards she posts on. Last thing I read was that she was planning to go away with her boyfriend. I obviously suspected she was hitched but didn't know. Seeing it confirmed was sobering. Good luck to her of course. What you think is a faint glimmer is nothing at all; and you curse yourself for being a fool and investing your skewed emotion. I'm alone. I have always been alone. To hope otherwise is psychosis and best kept hidden. There are no women. Not for me. I'm to blame of course, one way or another. I admit that. And fuck you.
I read the first few pages of my old copy of Black Spring on Friday night. I was mortified anew by the density of the prose and the range of the vocabulary. I couldn't believe how it was possible to construct something like that. It seemed a crazily energised and surreal landscape - but utterly flawless. My own words are prosaic in comparison: Burned bones floating on a white plasm; an exercise in nothing; a symbol of death at best. Otherwise the squawks of a recreant, a malingerer, an arsehole, no less, and a stinking one at that.
Music annoys me now, and so does life - generally speaking; but who am I to talk? I close my eyes and go on the hunt - and come back with nothing. My thoughts are churlish - I see though them. I sleep for a few hours, four at the most, and wake up anxious and frustrated.
Bad news then, this Sunday night. But one day I may find myself again and the hand of slow-time or grace or love may come again. Now I'm just killing time. Photos...
.
.
.
So let’s say I’m in the Tortle Shell...
I wake up with a head full of spells and powers. There is darkness. It is silent. I fashion reality at the 11th level. I explode from all points. Every malady is cured; every blemish erased. My teeth fall out and are replaced by new ones, as strong as steel and as white as snow. Around me a castle is raised; and an army of formidable warriors. I see them standing to in their dark blue mail. They are ghosts of a different order of intelligence. Bound to me and part of me. Aspects of me. Avatars. Outside the castle the world appears - as at 300 BC. The air feels fresh and crisp. The spume on the coast is clean. My eagles float above. In the distance, on the horizon, my earth ship, green with teaming growth, water falling from the rim into the sea. The sun is sinking.
I stand outside my room, on the highest tower, and a wave of despair washes over me, with little effect. I summon a state of intoxication and slow awareness.
Then I sense a woman...
And there the story ends. How could I go on, and remain true to myself? What is this horseshit, in other words? Better, much better, to go on the bum, to climb Everest, to take the Stropharia or to knob your sister. It’s even better to evacuate the flat after waves of exhaustion and ennui wash over you from the morning onwards and come down to The Clubhouse on a Saturday night in Twickenham and sit alone in the ante room while the bar is packed with screaming drunks and the band is about to play and Budweiser is now £3.10 a pint and you light your fifth cigarette.
There seems to be no solace. I must have high expectations - or constipation. The need is too great. I cannot force a conclusion in this state - not in a state of panic and desperation. I’ll sit and wait for my lucky break; a phone call, a tenner on the ground, a drink with a woman, goddess forbid; a kiss.
I will be leaving soon; as the band begins to play. Then food and laxatives and more beer.
Have a good night you bastards. Make the most of it.
Old I do wax; and from my weary limbs
Honour is cudgelled. Well, bawd I'll turn,
And something lean to cutpurse of quick hand.
To England will I steal, and there I'll steal:
And patches will I get unto these cudgell'd scars,
And swear I got them in the Gallia wars.
Pistol - Henry V
I have Terry Oldfield playing before the CAP5 system kicks in and kills the
amp for 15 minutes. Over the weekend the PSU on my Poweroid got fried. I broke
the holographic seals on the case and looked inside. All the fans and outlets
were caked in black dust. I replaced the power unit within two hours - but now
the DVD drive isn't working. I've either fried that too somehow or need to up
the wattage. I need another external hard drive - 250 gigs should do it - a
500 watt PSU - maybe another machine. I need serious backup. Money is no object.
I lost control of my finances a long time ago. I have no idea how much I owe.
This site needs an accessibility statement and a proper contact page with a form. I stripped all the inline CSS out after I got the machine running again and got a style sheet together. Watchfire says the site is AA - but I'm keeping the single-A gif. I couldn't get (hidden) printable characters in between the jpegs at the top of the page without breaking the navigation - causing it to jump when you navigated from the home page to any other page. I'm figuring what's the point. At least all the headers are right now. There are no Longdescs or title tags on the links - many of which make no sense in isolation - but all the images should have alt text - maybe title tags too - like everything on the home page.
The text looks good in Arial 14 (what doesn't?) but I want to stick to the browser default font. Short of getting some JavaScript font selector in place - which I don't want to do - that means using LINKs and having 4 or 5 style sheets with different fonts and sizes that Firefox and Netscape people can choose from in the View menu. Not sure about IE7. Other than that it's a question of the user selecting the font from the Tools menu in their browser - which is a pain in the backside. I wish Mozilla would sort their shit out and get a good font selector extension. I also see the PageRank extensions for Firefox are banjaxed across the board at the moment - which is something of a cheeser.
How does that shit grab you? Maybe I'm better off talking about suicide - or the end of my knob.
So much for that.
I dreamt heavily last night; falling asleep in a predatory mood; looking for targets. I dreamt of Butts Farm, the old estate. It was the great escape - the moving away. I was in something like the old flat; but it was falling apart - floors collapsed, paint peeling, toilet broken. I was sharing a room with Uncle Billy and about three or four young birds. They were hot. I had a fifty pound note and a camera that didn't work. I got on a coach that went nowhere. I got lost but found the Chertsey again and navigated by it. A black man spoke of getting kicked up the ass and I drifted awake after a mostly sleepless night and by some miracle made it to work on time.
I've moved to the Sennheisers.
I'm wondering what to do about wanking. I've gone off porn and it occurs to me that every single woman I know is either with another man or thinking about another man as I fantasise about them. That's an old clincher for me - it goes back a long time. My thoughts turn to the plain ridiculous - scenarios with a twist - and blatantly absurd to boot. Indeed, the more improbable the better. How about getting swept off by seven crusty women in a big wagon with the contents of my room (maintaining the sanctity of property) and getting loaded on skunk and mushrooms by the time we hit the M3 - heading for some carbon-neutral Roger Dean designed earthship full of natural wood furniture, Bob Venosa originals and plentiful vials of pure white DMT in the middle of a Wiltshire wood. I figure one of the crusties should be a work bench chemist, another a doctor, one or two lactating and all of them Pagan maniacs with a liberal dose of tattoos, dreads and piercings. The house should be remote enough so that no idle wanderer can hear my occasional screaming and it will be mushrooms and sensimilla and mother's milk for breakfast every morning.
Why not? It's possible. I'm serious by the way. It's as possible as anything else as far as I'm concerned. Anything that can save me that is. And why hold back? There is no room for modesty.
And when the wagon doesn't show it's the submarine or the legendary Tortle Shell - inviolable even by a full-blown god and where no time passes. I can see out but nothing can come in. Perhaps there will be a holodeck for sexual R&R.
Rolling Home by the Old Blind Dogs. Rolling home indeed. WOMAD is lined up and The Green Man is looking good. All systems go. I have the con.
Rolling home to Caledonia...
Queue the bagpipes.
Hell and night
Must bring this monstrous birth to the world's light.
Iago.
I am now completely asleep. Numb. Blind. At night there are dreams; some good,
some bad. The days are dreams too - exercises in madness. Delusions. That's
right, isn't it? I think so. Who can keep track of all the contingencies? Who
is to say what is right or wrong? Should you hate one person, why not hate everyone?
Every day at work I take several cigarette breaks. There is a spot near the office that is sheltered by evergreens, bays and boscage. It is a 'designated smoking area,' where the opium addict can feed their need. I stand there alone, most often, and take the opportunity to wonder what the fuck is going on. Events randomly unfold like a dream and I strike a series of mental poses in the zany cinematograph. Characters appear. Who the fuck are these people? What are they doing here? I see all the talk is couched with polite terms. We keep on a even keel - at a respectful distance - heads held high and with an innocent air, sailing straight for the edge of the world. Everything is ship-shape and Bristol fashion - and all our papers are in order. As I say, we are completely innocent, ready to meet any accusation with a mild confusion and amusement. If someone's head were to shrivel like a raisin, or if one's nose should begin to resemble the front of a cephalopod, why then, we send that chap a card and some flowers and wish them well. If you were to tear your hair out or lie on the ground and sob you'll be joining the elves in their dimension. In other words, you become an illusion. Yourself, a gateway to madness for others. A vector.
Roger that. Late at night. Early hours in fact. Just stood at the window for a cigarette. My street light went out briefly. Why? Maybe they switched it off in the control room at the Civic Centre, to get a better view of me on the infra-red. Can they see me with the Embankment cameras - even through the bushes?
Now where? I wanted to avoid facts - alleged facts, that is. If this is a lie, and it probably is, then a fact is a vicious lie. I've always been a bullshitter; prone to shooting my mouth off. In any case, which truths should take precedence? There's the rub. Is the fact that I had four cans of Diet Coke at work more significant than the fact that I ordered flowers to be delivered to my Nan tomorrow? What about the meeting in twelve hours - or the business pages? How about Burn by The Cure - or Temptation by New Order? What is happening with the stats?
I'm lost with all this stuff, so help me God, whoever she is.
OK, so fuck it then.
Listen, you, I don't give a fuck about the past. The writing is everything. It is the beginning and the end and all time in one moment. This is what we should do. This is what I want to see.
Barber's Adagio For Strings.
More early hours work after waking from a dream where I was being held hostage by Arab fanatics in some quasi-nazi hole of a country. I was shitting myself. As I came to I found a measure of control and went to slit the throat of my chief captor. It wasn't convincing though; and I had to execute the action a few times. Repetition seems to be a feature of consciousness.
I was watching Andrew Marr this morning talking to some Yank bint about about Guantanamo Bay. She was a blue-chip gabber and her version of reality, needless to say, was at vast variance with the line Andrew was digging at. She was doing quite well, I thought, despite the fact that she was obviously a lost soul. I soon found myself focusing on her legs during the wide-angle shots. She was wearing black tights and heels. Her posture was carefully co-ordinated, of course, but there was something familiar about the way she had her legs crossed and her hands clasped. If you are lucky you will drink white wine one day with such a managerial type - perhaps in a Travel Lodge bar in the Home Counties. Better still to be able to reach out and stroke one of those stockinged legs: Go back to her room and give her head; suck on her feet - that kind of thing.
I thought I would kill off my business site, in some way, and started hacking at it on Saturday in a kind of psychopathic rage - this after I replaced my banjaxed monitor with a 17" £40 Dell CRT that I carried back home from a local store. I kept hacking and snipping and CSS'ing and validating. Now it looks different - better, mostly. This site will be next. I need a 2006 archive and one style sheet to play with.
I read Dolan's piece on Byron this afternoon. Great stuff.
Early hours on a school night as I start this. I'm drinking percolated coffee and plainsong comes from the speakers at a low level. I may be here for some time.
The leader of this nation, whatever that means, has been citing the BigSkyMan and his role in the decision to send the boys to war. BigSkyMan will judge Tony, so Tony says. Tony talks to BigSkyMan to seek his guidance. BigSkyMan rules everything. Indeed, BigSkyMan made everything. We are all his children, whether you like it or not. Hello; and welcome to the bughouse. Please choose a psychosis that suits you.
The Big Chill is gripping the country. Temperatures have plummeted to 10c in London. I find I must wear a casual jacket on the walk to work.
Now Alice in Chains on the Sennheisers - Don't Follow - and the plainsong in the background.
Yesterday was another training session. Two women and two blokes. We finished early. I was back at the office by 3.30.
I have put on half a stone and moved to Firefox permanently. One of my sites disappeared earlier, swallowed up in a server failure. I need to back up my local drive. This film is late.
It's all a state of mind.
Whither?
My sleep pattern is shot and I've been having various nightmares over the last 72 hours or so. The piece de resistance was getting my head battered in by a big fella. He finished me off as I was losing consciousness by jabbing a screwdriver into my brain. I could feel it moving around in there as I woke up - which was a new one on me.
I'm taking a look around at the blues - as Joni said; biding my time. I got the camera working alright and can't see any dust bunnies on the files (at the moment). Someone called me the other day to ask if they could use an image on their departmental magazine. I agreed. A Richmond sunset photo. I don't know which one. There are quite a few.
The curator of the gallery has all the information he needs for my display. I just need to get 5 images printed on A4 or A3 and mounted, which could be expensive. There will be about thirty other people with displays.
I cried off our London walk today. I couldn't face it. I couldn't face anyone or talk to anyone.
Yesterday I got a letter from Oxfam asking if I wanted to apply for steward supervising jobs at the 10 gigs they may have this year. The list included a few new festivals. I'll definitely apply for WOMAD and possibly The Bestival. I'll apply for The Green Man festival too. Not only does it look interesting, it also falls on the same weekend as my birthday - and I'll probably need to be there by the Thursday. Anything to avoid sitting in a bar drinking shit that makes me miserable trying to make out what people are saying and bored when the words are coherent and making hay of forty years of pure pathetic failure seems like a good idea. The idea of working that day - the birthday - and getting wrecked on my own in my tent is more in tune with the nature of the game. Nothing is worse than being in a crowd of people and having nothing to say to them - or rather; having nothing to say that they are prepared to hear - or can hear. In a nutshell; fuck everyone.
How's that for commitment?
And thanks for all your help - you useless cunts.
I'll still have to have a party - but now it can be mid-week. Tactical containment. Bullshit minimisation.
Well, it had to be said. I'm very tired now; and sometimes it seems that there's nothing left. Week after week rolls by and avoiding contact is becoming more of a privilege and prerogative. As you may know, again, nothing is worse than being semi-stoned, or eating a meal that doesn't fill your belly, or having a draught that won't slate your thirst. Boredom, you bastards? I'll take you to boredom; I'll show you where the boredom is.
Same situation then - and no complaining allowed. Finish this pointless exercise and kill time until the morning. Sleep badly and have bad dreams. Another day at work, which is like every other day, and go down the Clubhouse at opening time. Drink some beer, come home, eat some shit, look at some porn and go to bed. Excellent. I'll leave my hat.
A few newish photos - although some have already been posted here. In any case, I hope I come down soon.
As I start this 2001: A Space Odyssey is playing behind me. I bought the DVD a couple of months ago. A lot of digging has been done on the film; right down to the chess game with HAL.
I watched it a few times, idly, as I have done for the best part of 25 years. One night, not too long ago, the sight of the stewardess on the Pan-Am flight stuck in my mind. I thought about the film from, what I guess you would say, a post-feminist perspective. It struck me for the first time that there were no significant female characters in the whole piece. With the exception of some fairly token Russian scientists, all the women were secretaries, flight attendants, receptionists, housewives, cute children: Mostly futuristic versions of Doris Day - right down to the fashion statements; and feckless to boot. There were no black people either. No Asians, Orientals, Hispanics.
Was this deliberate? No, I doubt it very much. All I get from this is how screwed in the head Kubrick was; how limited his vision. There's no hidden statement there about the sterility or corruption of the human condition. Too much is taken as read - and the wrong kind of things.
Kubrick apparently joked at the time that he was suckering MGM into financing a religious movie. Nonsense. There's no mystery. The mind behind the film is a grey suit. The great mystery revealed is just an elaborate little green man story; advanced technology, big rockets that fly through the night sky, minds embedded into machines, dazzling toys that are nothing more than an extension of the rivet or the cog wheel. There is more mystery in a lump of shit, when you come to consider it.
It's a shame, really, that so much effort was spunked on an interpretation of the enigma of our evolution. I'm interested in how we came to be, but I know next to nothing about it. Monoliths aside (let us be kind and see the monolith as a cipher for something - the usual apologist view and mine for many years) the story goes something like this...
Humans are little primates living up trees and eating berries, nuts, fruit and maybe the occasional insect. Climate change destroys their habitat and they are forced onto the plains of Africa. In the movie the environment is desert - but I understand it was more like grassland - populated by herds of ungulate animals - wildebeest - that kind of thing. We looked something like these cats...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australopithecus_afarensis
...and our backs were against the wall, so the story goes...what with having to adapt to the new environment and all.
So much for that. At some stage a Chavvy picks up a thigh-bone and finds he (or she) can batter the opposition to death. We move from scratching around for seeds and beatles to eating raw meat. Human brain size doubles in short order; in fact the most amazing development of any organ in a higher animal in the whole evolutionary record. Language. Tools. Fire. Song. Religion. The whole show. Even the theory of evolution itself (ironic, eh?). Kubrick goes for the little green man theory. McKenna has a similar idea, but more interesting: Early humans, forced into dietary exploration, ate the mushrooms that would have thrived on the shit of those ungulate animals. We got whacked, and that got us thinking. I like the idea. I like it better.
Two days off now and time to get my act together, allegedly. The walls are still standing and the communications grid is working fine. Apathy reigns and I have taken to pouring myself a Lagavulin - the '88 Pedro Ximenez - which is nowhere near as good as the '84. Thank you Zeus for not striking me down, yet, but I don't know how people can live a sober existence. Like Bowman and Poole in the movie; living a flat life. Make a desert and call it peace. I pray for rain.
Operation Pointless Exercise.
Just used Watchfire. This site has now gone from Triple-A to Double-A to Single-A in the space of a few weeks. Another site stays at Double-A; yet another site is apparently Triple-A (with warnings) but the Double-A gif is staying.
This is progress apparently. This is pissing in the wind. This is a 5-gramme brass weight...
...and if you ate that amount of dried Stropharia Cubensis an invisible tidal wave a mile high would come at you and blast you into another realm. Five dried grammes. People laughed sometimes when Terence said it. Three grammes was enough for some of the pros. You could do one gramme on a school night and work the next day. Three grammes a day for a month would make you insane. Happy, but insane. Six to eight grammes was too much even for Terence, possibly the greatest Head who ever lived. Five was enough, so it's said, to make you hang on to the floor for dear life (and converse with the unknown). Movement is out of the question, apparently.
The CD I am playing at the moment has one 75-minute track on it. One word - Om - over and over. This is the end of the week. The last chance saloon; a final shot of diplomacy. This is my measured voice and not the griping, deluded clown who chatters his weird ideas to the wall. The performance never ends at my place. Just about the only time I stop is when I sit here on a Sunday night and string these symbols together.
Symbols. Shapes. Letters into words. One word dependant on the others. Rules to observe. With the rules a history, a culture, prejudice; an illusion of sorts.
Take it easy Lighty. You are going too far. Go along with the game and see where it leads you. Imagine you are walking into some shitty woods - Crane Park, for example, and walk into a random situation. On one level you are going through the motions. You have your telescopic Leki and Swissy. Nothing occurs of course. Nothing ever occurs. You just hope that your soul is free and leading a better life - perhaps in the clouds. So, as I say, you go along with the flow, except in my case you turn into a ranting lunatic. You play the game alright - but you get too absorbed. You begin to take the piss. Because on another level it's one big psychodrama. A psychodrama of sheer fucking boredom, as it happens. The facilitator - let's say the ego - is waiting for a bright spark to start screaming and break the spell. Maybe everyone else will join in. That would be success.
Again, take it easy. Keep quiet. Relax. Stop worrying.
Killed the Om tune with four minutes to go. Tried Kodály, Bax, now Bantock's Pagan Symphony. The music is dying - if you know what I mean.
And now it's dead.
I went out Friday night for a friend's birthday and got a little drunk. The week went ok - despite my expectations. I was utterly tired by Thursday - but perked up after a dead sleep. I talked to a few birds during the week and bought a new shirt. I wore a tie on Friday. I cracked a crown later that night and had two pints, about seven bottles of beer and £28 of Chinese food. I spent some time over the weekend looking at photos of Chemmy Alcott. If it comes to being tied to a bed and raped and murdered by a psychopathic superwoman Chemmy would make the nut - so to speak. Christ knows what would happen if we paired up. Easier all round if she just killed me at dawn. I would opt for suffocation. She would be redeemed to me, to be honest. Better to be a stylish murderess than a b-class celebrity. I pray to the god of the Sufis that she harbours some dark secret; if only for her sake.
Where does all this leave me? Looking at that sentence and gasping for air. Don't worry though: I can lift my hand up and make a fist; a miracle still unexplained.
Now then, here is the plan: I end this and hope for intercession. The night is made darker by the rain. All I need to do is find a way to move through space as I lie on my bed; hiding in my room.
Make that 42 wives and 751 million pounds. Why not? The more the merrier. And I'll undergo some pan-anamnetic sublimation and be a 40th level Weredragon and a Wizard/Warlock/Psionicist/Fighter too. I'll steal money from bad people - even kill a few perhaps. My wives can run my portfolio and manage the estates.
The immediate question is whether I ring for a Chinese meal. 19:52. I am not hungry. I do not recognise hunger. My mind is empty - full of trash, pap and the detritus of bullshit. I am talking to myself constantly - usually griping and swearing. Everything gets planned and little gets done. I would be better off slitting my wrists than writing out my to do list. It would fill a page of A4 in 11 point Times New Roman. I couldn't print the list though because the Laserjet is nearly out of toner. That's another job that needs doing.
The camera is back. I need to put the lens on. It's a major job that could take up to ten minutes.
Away from me all ye that work vanity.
Nice one.
A half-cocked smoke at the window and a hunt into the past. I was looking for an answer. All I could come up with was James to my left on the lions share of the tab and Ian lying on the floor. You don't have to do anything. That's what Jamie said.
It was a bad evening in many ways. I cried when I listened to the tape in my bombed-out borrowed room nearly a year later. I was going to kill myself probably; and just at that moment Ian rang from the pub to say that Dorothy had been in a car accident. His voice was full of feeling and sympathy. That mad loyalist fucker who had bought an English flag with him on the ferry 'soaked in Fenian blood.' Now he was keeping me going.
The mushroom evenings were better. One night after we tidied the house and threw what we thought was usable into a pot to boil. We had some gear of course. Santana went on the Hi-Fi and I floated in a Yoga position on the sofa unit. I smiled. This, like the acid trip, was long before the big come down movement.
18 years ago.
Lots of laughs...
That comes to me from the speakers now. Joni Mitchell again. The big one. I love you too. What is this song?
Blue.
Of course. Now Circle Game. Jo had a turntable that would play both sides. I played one of the disks for 24 hours non-stop in Beechtree Avenue - during the big come down movement.
We can only look behind from where we came and go round and round in the circle game.
Too much of the world going on. The magic mirror to dreamland is difficult to use. It goes that way before it breaks. The real world is ascendant and, as usual, the stakes are high. Five days of bullshit; then two days to recover. On it goes until you get snubbed out. Better to cut your own throat now. So Miller thought anyway.
[pause]
21:20. Just ordered the meal. Three hours of work this morning. I deserve a treat. The window is wide open. Get some air into the room. It all starts again tomorrow. Find a way through. Simple.
Not much energy left. I hacked this photo page together earlier. It took me longer to get the files in the right directory on the server than it did to select, crop, optimise and resize all the files and get them on the page. Yesterday: A site redesign. I know next to nothing about CSS - apart from the fact, now, that it must be possible to grasp. Today: A walk around Virginia Water. Rest of the weekend: Various chores between funks. I'm dwindling. Somehow half a stone down. Cold last week and three days off work. I blew a transistor on the Rotel and bought a new amp - a Cambridge Audio 540A. I doubled or trebled the wattage and have all the idiot-proof benefits of the proprietary 'CAP5' fault detection system. I bought a new DVD player as well. The Chavvy who took my money told me that I must have a good job - but that was after I mentioned that the free headphones might be useful for work.
How I get through the coming week - I don't know. Another jury-rigged training session is scheduled. A backlog of work and personal missions. Many deadlines to meet and many missed. Much reorganising. Half of the food in the fridge is past its sell-by date and I am out of jam and edible cheese. I've worked it out: All I need is 42 million pounds and 21 wives and everything would be fine.
Fuck, is that it? Probably. I was driven through Egham today and even had lunch at the Barley Mow. I felt nothing. No connection. The locus dream is dried-out dead. Some other guy saw that place with big eyes and swollen balls. There have been so many compromises in the intervening years I have long since lost touch with what I was. I'm a bloated fetus now rotting in a cocoon. You came down. So what and anyway. The place has sold out too - years ago. What happens next I have no idea. It will take something mind-blowing to shake me loose. It would have to be like Cambrai, or Hiroshima - something I cannot anticipate. Given my peculiar history, it would have to be something remarkable.
At any rate, I feel ready to drop. I need to crash out soon. Another night in bed for no apparent reason.
"It is to you, Tania, that I am singing. I wish I could sing better, more
melodiously, but then perhaps you would never have consented to listen to me."
- Henry Miller - Tropic of Cancer
"Let us condole the knight; for, lambkins, we will live."
- Henry V - Act 2. Scene 1.
The week is all I am left with - which is fine, I guess. I took 116 photos this morning and two are usable...
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There is dust on the sensor again, a hair in there too. Back to the drawing board. Tomorrow will be a busy day - with a trip to Teddington in the bargain as well. As I say, the past week is pretty much all I can process. There were some recollections of old friends and my dalliance with the Pagan scene. Stoned evenings in front of the screen. Work every day.
Monday was mostly preparation for Tuesday - the delivery of a day's training to five lady librarians on our CMS system. I don't know how good I was - I might have been awful. I survived though. The days rolled by. I read an 8-page bio Wednesday night that broke my heart. Thursday I composed a big email from the pub to the author. Friday was reactive, in every sense. I was wrapped tight and focused on the work in front of me. Then, in the mess of information coming at me from boards, blogs, news pages, home pages, press releases and emails, I see her and stop.
It is a his-res picture of a girl, somewhere between 16 and 20 - difficult to tell. She is being helped out of a wheelchair. She is smiling, laughing. So is the man behind her lifting her out of the chair.
She seems to be incapable of any coordinated movement. From her mouth, with perfect white, square teeth, comes a long dribble of spittle. She seems happy. I contemplate the scene in silence. My mind is quiet. I stare at her as if in some way I can reach out and get a sense of her life - to help me greater understand it, and hence my own. There is no methodology applicable to situations like this. You simply observe and feel the sadness rise. This is real suffering, surely. How can I feel like a failure so much of the time? This disgust of my own body. The general feeling of hopelessness and loneliness.
Love makes it all the more bearable. All. How long has love been around for? At what stage - between monkeys and women and men - did this thing come to exist? Maybe love was born when we started singing about it. It got a name. Then, the myth of love was born; and the mystery of it came to be. Possibly.
When I left work on Friday afternoon I had a beer and went to Waitrose. As I walked into the product paradise the image of the girl in the wheelchair was strong in my mind. I was open to everything - letting myself look at the people on show; conjuring up that same silence I felt when I saw her. But after a few minutes of negotiating the aisles I was ready to rip someone's head off.
Later that night I find the bio author has been diagnosed with a serious illness. I was moving closer to her, in a way. What next, I wonder? I get a sense of the immediacy of my own mortality - this pre-cancer state, and fall into a deep but troubled sleep. I like this woman a lot, and she has taken some bad knocks. I want her to survive, and prosper. Time for me to change too, perhaps.
I wake up on Saturday and, after a smoke and one off the wrist, I attack the room, wash-up, hoover and deal with the dust. I re-order my little-used CDs and my DVD collection. I clean the side and restructure. The candles get lit. I could die in the room now, more easily. Indeed; let me be here in the storm's eye, with my books and films. This way I can bite the bullet in luxury. I'll even make sure the morphine is neatly tucked away. There are six varieties of booze, nutmeg, B3, Kava Kava, Nurofen, Trifluoperazine and Amyl Nitrate. Not to
