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Another couple of thousand words. And about 50 mistakes corrected. All in, more than 7,000 words so far - and 5 days to go.
Some time ago, I can't remember how long, it was night in our room on Bronte Ward. Earlier, in the afternoon, we had discovered a trail of shit running from the WC out into the corridor by the desk where the nurses sat monitoring the heartbeats of the people in cardiac step-down next door and tried to deal with the various wandering nutters from the other rooms.
Patrick had thought initially that the shit was leaves, and rubbed one with his foot. I knew better. Someone had walked shit - probably their own shit - into our WC. It could have been Ivy, James or Dennis - on one of their regular incursions into our room. They were likely all shitting themselves on a regular basis - especially Ivy - who wore big incontinence pants.
I was surprised Patrick could be so dumb. He was on top of things. He had his act together. He was a Pikey, as such, who had blown a lot away on Bolivian Marching Powder. He had fucked his heart into a mess - one of the worst the surgeon had seen - and wore a scar from high up on his chest down to his belly button. (They cut you right open, you see?) He had been in for 10 months. He was a hard nut and people phoned him who were off their heads. Now and then he would come out with something like:
"Look, they cut me open. I've got a scar from my neck to my stomach. That would kill me."
Or...
"Stop smoking that dope you silly cow; you're dopey enough as it is."
It was evening now, as I say, and a nurse had wiped up the shit earlier. I had pulled the curtain around my bed. For some reason I was the only one on the ward that did this. Ivy was on the loose outside, calling out for 'Joe' again...and then I heard James wander into the room mumbling in mad, impenetrable Irish brogue. I heard him shuffling just outside my curtain. I was confident he wouldn't come in - the curtain seemed to fox him - and one of the nurses would deal with him soon. I checked that my glasses were safe though, just to be sure. Like others, he was a kleptomaniac.
I had not long ago taken my Ramipril and it was beginning to dig in. I was expecting a heavy night again and the liturgy of James mumbling and Ivy crying out next door for Joe put me into a fit of laughter. I reached for the oxygen. I was caning the oxygen at every available opportunity at this time. It costs something like £600 for a canister (on the NHS) if you want the jism at home. They sell it at a hike in trendy bars - and at Glasto. I had often thought of Brad Pitt in Fight Club explaining why they have it on aircraft...
Oxygen gets you high.
Here it was gratis. I muffled my laughter and pulled the mask from the wall. I cranked up the gas - way above the level the nurses would - and breathed deeply. I knew that if I tried to sleep my dreams would shatter any remaining equilibrium. Dreams on Ramipril had a powerful immediacy that invariably exposed and magnified a pressing anxiety. They told you that you needed to do something - urgently - over and over again. There was always a problem - on Ramipril.
I didn't know when it would end. I had no idea if I would ever recover.
I was officially discharged a few days ago, although they had let me come home for extended periods before that. I had an email from an international journal asking me if I would like to write something on the Rosy Crucifixion - for consideration, as it were. I have plenty of time. I pulled Sexus from the shelf the same night and began again. I was impressed anew at the density of gems. So much never made my dissertation - like these...
"The mind of the writer, no longer preoccupied with observing and knowing, wanders meditatively amidst a world of forms which are set spinning by a mere brush of his wings. No tyrant this, wreaking his will upon the subjugated minions of his ill-gotten kingdom. An explorer, rather, calling to life the slumbering entities of his dream. The act of dreaming, like a draught of fresh air in an abandoned house, situates the furniture of the mind in a new ambiance. The chairs and the tables collaborate: an effluvium is given off, a game is begun."
"For the modern hero thought leads nowhere; his brain is a colander in which he washes the soggy vegetables of the mind."
"Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty."
Back then. I went out for a walk today and stopped off at Zizzis for Pappardelle con Manzo Piccante and a glass of Valpolicella Sartori. It was a fine boost. I'm on Warfarin at moment and get my blood checked tomorrow. Still not sure how things will pan out; but I'm not letting it worry me. I'm resilient. After the winter of '89/90 - I could face anything.
Back. After nearly 4 weeks in Kingston Hospital - including a spell in intensive care.
Well...
Influenza, no. Wrong time of year. Some unspecified virus hit me all of six weeks ago. Lack of sleep, ragged nerves, swollen ankles, swollen groin, massively distended belly, sores, panic attacks when I lie down in bed. It's still going strong. All is contingency. Half way through the anti-bios. If it's not better in 2 or 3 days I'm checking into A and E.
Holy shit, it isn't easy. Bad influenza. Maybe the worst one ever. Dreaming in seconds. Hyperventilating. Dark rings around my bloodshot eyes. Vomiting. Took to writing in bed earlier. Half asleep, half in hell...
You are alone here
This is your room
There is no obligation
Only to survive
Clear the air and breathe
Dream seconds dreams if you must
But do not obey the roles of work
You will live through this
There will be time yet
Works and days of hands
You don't have to do anything
Every second you move closer to the open door
The 113
You can do it
Influenza
Tough going
No rest for the wicked
Put KPFK on?
It's scary stuff.
Twenty years ago today I was at Kingswood. That evening I didn't even get stoned...or drunk. I had to make a tutorial early the following morning - or I would be on a second or third formal warning. I watched Michael Fish's weather forecast and fell asleep a little later on in my squeaky, dilapidated bed. I slept well in those days, held in the arms of fate as I was.
I woke up to the sound of my Binatone digital clock radio. I drifted to, listening to the DJ talk about a national disaster, advising people to stay indoors - as it was chaos outside; roads blocked, infrastructure down.
My first thought was that a nuclear bomb had exploded, or maybe there had been a melt-down at Windscale.
I lit a cigarette and looked out of the window.
Nothing. Everything seemed normal. I couldn't see much from The Swamp - A107 as I recall - just part of the back yard, old houses, a car or two...distant trees. The air seemed a clean, light grey. As I listened to the radio it became clear that there had been a storm and that somehow I had slept through it.
I got washed and dressed and headed for the campus down the rat-run of wooded paths from Kingswood. At the first serious obstacle I met up with a bird called Kate - Christ, I remember her name. She was gap-toothed and gat-toothed. She had hair like a middle-aged librarian or a schoolmarm. She also had sensational legs - amongst the best I have seen. We made our way down to the campus together - over and under fallen trees. She was in the same class - the same tutorial, studying Classics. We arrived late and when I made excuses some of the people in the class laughed; because they thought I was nothing more than a fuckwit...a time waster...a state school weasel.
I sat next to Kate that morning, as I recall. And I recall seeing her much later saying goodbye to someone near the drinks machine at Kingswood reception. She was leaving, after about 4 months. I got chucked out a few weeks later.
So much so. Twenty years. Now ploughing through Capricorn again and my thoughts turn to dark spaces, safe places. Creeping below the waves in an Oberon class submarine; checking my PPK on the Orient Express; touring old houses in another England with Jonathan Creek; packing the opium away in a fog-shodded Baker Street.
Dark spaces and safe places. Away in the fields like the end of Brazil. Or away down the roads in the Mark II Vauxhall Cavalier cutting through provinces, through fields, through hamlets with MOT garages and by Barley by overpasses and hash in my sports jacket pocket and Floyd or Bush playing with Hollywood or Olde Hinges calling - with mushroom tea and small cans of cold Bud and music on tap and overflowing ashtrays.
A life, of sorts. Near and far. The further away the more tangible, the more human it seems. No white screen then. No hermetic seal. Now I feel that in the dark I should see something. And that fact alone is driving me mad.
Bagpuss, dear Bagpuss
Old Fat Furry Catpuss
Wake up and look at this thing that I bring
Wake up, be bright, be golden and light
Bagpuss, oh hear what I sing
Silence, other than an ambient stream of Sleepbot noise in the background. John
Boorman's Zardoz plays behind me, with the commentary on, but the sound
is turned down. Now and then I have dipped into True Hallucinations.
I may be in a Vortex, or the Black Iron Prison. I am certainly somewhere. Perhaps Plato's Cave.
Six days off work. No end in sight to the coughing. Back to the office tomorrow, in four hours no less. This being the last blast of diplomacy. And then dream of me with croutons. In a few hours I assume the mask. Then the downward slide. It's enough that I am in a dream now: Slack jawed and distracted. War games commence at dawn. I have a starter pistol and a roll of Blu Tack. At the moment I'm alone in the bunker with my Old Pulteney and one can of Budweiser left. A shower, attend to my teeth, a dark shirt and walk to Starbucks. Double Espresso, a cigarette, then begin the manoeuvres with a 150 or so unread emails. Mostly bullshit. Like life; like porn.
From past experience I know the day will go badly, unceasingly, until the four cans at dusk and the Pulteney and a chattering hysteria back at the bunker in anticipation of another bout on Tuesday.
And so on.
If I could wear a duvet perhaps, with a padded dunce cap I could pull over my face, and if we lived in another world, I could ask my boss to opt out for an hour or three and wrap myself around in a state of semi-conscious focus; just me regarding one problem at a time - in segments: Cut into slices, as it were. Darkness is crucial. Tunnel vision helps. Seeing the screen at a distance, a solitary white slab in a void. An anomaly. A kind of joke.
The phone rings and you hear a voice. But you are in a bunker in the Kuiper belt, 55 AU from the Sun. In the voice you hear fear, uncertainty, compassion, appetition. The words themselves are meaningless; a collection of phonemes and concepts strung together by a strung-out and doomed mind. You know it's bullshit. It could just as well be the beginning of Bagpuss, or the meanderings of Roger the Hat...or a recipe for sour bread.
Bronchitis then, probably, and boredom. I'll lie in the dark for a while and look into eternity. Try to carry a bit of it with me through the day.
Thus may we gather honey from the weed,
And make a moral of the devil himself.
Henry V
I've been off work for a few days with 'flu, trying to hold it together, but
still finding the time to take stock of things. Time for one of those periodical
apologies I feel - for all the crap I've spewed out here over the last, what,
two or three months? The tone changed as I grew more desperate, more bored,
more frustrated. Conscious, as I was, that I was killing myself too.
Several things happened last week. I got some praise from unexpected sources. A couple of people complemented me on my photography and a course I taught on Thursday seemed to go well. The attendees seemed pleased at the end of the day. More importantly, a few people told me - online - that they liked the beginning of the Gate story. Hits on the website have been up. September has been the busiest month ever with over 2,000 hosts served and over 7,000 requests for pages. It dropped out today - right down. Very quiet. No bother. It worries me when so many people are looking at the site. That's self-referential though. So bad.
Thursday night I had a minor collapse and started coughing what's left of my lungs up. I've been ill all weekend. Yesterday afternoon I fell into a reverie. I was loaded, if it's possible, on Benylin cough mixture and Nurofen Cold & Flu tablets, not to mention the usual medication. I opened the window. The lights were off. Only the glow from the monitor illuminated the room from the inside. I stood at the window and stared at the dead ground, the Elder and the Ivy and dead taupe branches as thick as my finger against the wall outside. Then I turned and stared around the room. In total silence I felt the draughts of late September air eddy around my naked body. I could do nothing, not even smoke. It was like sheets of water were cascading over my eyes. I felt like a stranger. For a while I seemed to forget what I was - which these days amounts only to what I am supposed to be. The thought of doing anything, reading a book for example, even the greatest book ever written, would have seemed like madness. In the middle of the room the grey light pouring through the open window struck me like a revelation; it could have been a golden ratio for all I knew, or a sign from god herself.
I feel better now. Jairamji plays in the background.
With Gate in progress I have to make a commitment to work on it for the next few months. I have a bunch of ideas. It will be my first proper story.
Take care friends.
Things have been slapdash recently, especially here. It's all fucked up. There are too many links, too many quotes, the writing is poor, the entries are too short. The Glasto story is stalled, I can't see the point. I'm a creep. A weirdo.
Anyway...
Last Monday I ordered a new copy of Tropic of Capricorn from a local independant bookshop. My Grafton paperback is falling apart. I picked it up on Wednesday. It was the Harper Collins edition, with a lurid cover and an essay by James Frey. I've disliked Frey since I read a review of his debut novel in 2003. I felt slightly cheated. Harper seemed to be pushing the volume as a piece of porn and hiring Frey to contribute to it threw a light on them and the whole rotten publishing industry. I felt it was time to hunt down an old review...
http://old.exile.ru/2003-May-29/book_review.html
And of course I had to read...
http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=7994
Both items predate the Smoking Gun article which brought Frey to his knees. I tried to revise the Wikipedia entry for Frey but a skirmish broke with some Yanks - Southern Yanks to boot. As it stands, the Wikipedia article is semi-bullshit - which is to say; bullshit. I read the guidelines and switched to step 2 - disengage. Step 1 was never trust the bastards again.
While I was there I looked up John Dolan and Gary Brecher - I've been raving about Brecher for years.
It turns out he probably doesn't exist. The picture of him published with the War Nerd pieces on The eXile website is of Roger Edvardsen of the Norwegian rhythm and blues band Ehem. Who is Gary Brecher then? Maybe John Dolan, maybe another eXile staffer. Again; disabused.
Two things in the first Dolan article struck me to the core...
"It's a fitting literary metonymy for the Bush era: the rich have decided to steal it all, even the tears of the losers."
Steal the tears of the losers.
And then...
"It's a pity Frey never studied Stevens. If he had, he'd have known that the more times one repeats an assertion, the less convincing it becomes."
The more times one repeats an assertion, the less convincing it becomes. That scared the piss out of me. For at least 12 hours I could think of nothing else, thinking myself as an arsehole, a shyster - no better than Frey on every count.
Tuesday night I was broke, and I've been having problems using the only credit card that works. Wednesday morning I checked my account and found that Oxfam had returned my deposit for Stewarding at Glastonbury. I decided to get pissed that evening and walked down to The Clubhouse. On the way down there I passed John Prescott's empty bookshop. John closed down a while ago...
I liked his shop...and I liked the old bloke. In the window he left a bunch of aged Faber promo boards. One struck me anew...
The suits worried me. And the soirée setting. Hard to see in the photo the wry smile on Hughes' face. Auden and Eliot were sell-outs for sure. Spender and MacNeice - I don't know. (What do I know?) Stoppard and Heaney look the part. So does Durrell.
Anyway. I did the business and got pissed - again. Later on in the week I started to read Capricorn. I stopped when I read...
"...perhaps I was spoiled in the bud by the books I read. But it is ages since books claimed me. For a long time now I have practically ceased to read."
I had lost all hope by Friday. I was down the pub by 4.30. I got drunk again and later in the evening bought a Dansak. Saturday I was dead, dead to the world, hopelessly tired. I lay in bed and ruminated on death. In the dark behind my closed eyes I tried to discern what it was in me that would stop at the moment of death. The sense of appetition - appetite? The sense of readiness? Moments of expression? Memory? It seemed I had nothing to hold on to. No love, no pleasure, no pride, no sense of peace or place, no high. Unsated, digging at a wall in fury which I know will lead to nowhere: This must be the living death that so fascinated Miller and Frankel.
Photos from last weekend and Monday...
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Too many links then. Too many facts. Too many photos - and bad ones at that - and too far to go. Not got long at this rate. With the bullshit piling up all over, even inside.
Do you feel like a remnant
Of something that’s past?
Do you find things are moving
Just a little too fast?
Do you hope to find new ways
Of quenching your thirst?
Do you hope to find new ways of doing
Better than your worst?
Hey slow, Jane, let me prove
Slow, slow, Jane, we’re on the move
Nick Drake - Hazey Jane
Back at the machine. Feeling sick. Anxious. Bored. Playing patience and minesweeper
over and over. Fastest time on the intermediate is now 37 seconds. I noticed
yesterday evening that my belly button is caked with dried blood. I had scratched
at it absentmindedly the other day. When I move I get a twinge of pain. The
thought of it makes me high - and brings relief and laughter. Somehow I could
taste the salt-blood of the scab without it going near my mouth. A sympathetic
experience.
Root canal work tomorrow. Down at the locals everyone seems to be falling apart. Two regulars have died in the last few weeks. Others are sick, depressed, paranoid, broke, battling cancer, out of breath, in trouble with the law, putting on weight, fighting to stay afloat. Any good news seems fake; a false promise, a door to another failure and more misery.
Last weekend I took a walk down to the Coach House Café at Marble Hill for an espresso. The terrace was busy with middle class couples tending to their children and discussing dinner parties and mountaineering ventures. There were kids everywhere. Watching them play I reflected that if I lived another 20 years I could end up cleaning the scum off the hulls of their river boats. How things have changed...
I gradually lost it during the week. Around Wednesday I tidied and hoovered the room - to prepare my death bed, so to speak. It was time to get back to basics; just like the old days. Lie on your back and open your inner ear. Music plays. The Devil is on the left. But there is nothing now: I cannot fake the free fall of those days.
More oak leaves in my pocket, and disintegrating in my card wallet. For strength, you see? I've stayed in the flat for the last 40 hours. Good move. The thought of facing the shit streets again was too much. I dipped into Tropic of Capricorn, the Miller blog and read about Hunter Thompson on Wikipedia and elsewhere. Three miscarriages and two dead babies. I listened to KPFK again and Sleepbot. I tried to watch a McKenna movie on Google. I tried to watch some television. With the sound turned down. It's the only way I can stand it. I've been looking for the numbers and not finding them. There must be a reason things are this way. Oh to be possessed. You don't have to do anything.
A bughouse then. A nut joint with no end in sight.
Another major revision. I broke the 5,000 word barrier yesterday. Another 5,000-10,000 to go I think. I don't know. I want to break 10,000. Seems likely; I've only reached Tuesday night.
I took some photos last weekend. 324. Five usable ones are at the top of the page.
Cracked another crown. Picking up more medication later this afternoon. Putting on weight and work has been going badly. On Friday I took a break in the gardens and plucked a leaf from an Oak. I carried it back to the office with me, believing it conferred strength. Friday I hit The Old Anchor early and then The Clubhouse - and the Anchor again. A good evening, though all day I had been feeling as sick as a pike. Might be these cheap tablets. Cracking one off like this is good fun.
I saw a boy in a wheelchair. I have been listening to Terence and from Terence to KPFK. Neil Young live and Joni Mitchell. Plainsong and Nick Drake. Linger and Sympathy For The Devil. Frank Zappa, Kate Bush, Terry Callier and Blade Runner Blues. Walking the streets earlier to Barber's Adagio For Strings.
I dreamt of The Lady of The Flowers the other night. On waking I moved on and forgot what happened - a partial lie.
Another croak then. Tomorrow I'm back in the shit. Get down on your knees and pray for a catastrophe to cheer your soul. Bolt everything. Use all chains.
Nothing
real to report. Work. Nothing. Dreams - not much. The talking chair; changing
into a biomechanoid fighter. A flood, a tidal wave - a woman swimming the crest
of the wave. Nod the proto barman charging £5 for a beer. Outdoor cafe
by the dip. Me there with a laptop. Ghost hunters find a packet of papers with
a woman's name on it. I cannot remember the name but apparently it was a horse
running in the 8.20. 8.20 seems a little late - or early. I hack into the email
of the High Priestess. She is in trouble for drinking. A list of bars. I read
on eagerly to align myself against the enemies. Brecher writes. Fantasies of
castles and fair maidens. Conversations with The Empress - her as the ice maiden
and me as Quasimodo. Sour vinegar breath and breathlessness after waking with
a mild hangover twice a day. The drug of the moment is Ibuprofen. Twenty-seven
pence for twelve from Waitrose. Free range Scotch Eggs. Never eat a pasty in
a wrapper. Carr's biscuits. Camera in its case. Dark cold days and nights outside
bars going bad one way or another. Have a lovely evening. The locals are dying.
Carefully worded emails. Home cooking. Half pounders and Doners in fresh naan. Looking for content. Always looking: Amy MacDonald, Smack My Bitch Up, Kelfin Oberon (I've been meaning to quote him for weeks. His book sits by my side. I bought it from him, his boy on his back, in The Tiny Tea Tent a few years ago. 2003 I think: My only dope-free Glastonbury) and no more title tags. Even Lady of the Flowers is back - for the moment.
Writing a short story is not easy. The linear progression is tiresome. I never really get any feedback. I'm in the dark. Completely.
I Was Taking Lots Of Medicines
To Unleash Dé Awe Full Truth
Dé Answers Received
Were Strange In Deed
Ancient Wisdom From My Youth
A Fountain
Store Of Wisdom
Deep Rooted In This Earth
Awakened States
Of Feeling What
This Life Is Truly Worth
Immortal Soul Awaken
In Me A Way Perceived
Bee Came Conceived
And Then Achieved
Dé Innocence Of Ré Birth
From How Pa Tricked Kelfin Òg - Kelfin Oberon
I've been watching Zeitgeist again, getting more and more depressed and paranoid. I felt myself losing control - exhibiting signs of OCD. I've been drinking all day and coming down. Five or six events within the last few days have tested me emotionally. I sensed a downward slide. A few minutes ago I went to the bathroom and looked at myself carefully in the mirror. I stared into my own eyes. Not deeply, but with a knowing, cynical look: Turning away as if to emphasise the sense of retreat - of surrender. I know the world is mad and we are governed by the least among us. Many things are wrong. I won't list them; you should be able to work them out for yourself. The list is too long anyway. But what else?
Blow after blow last week; my life resembling the world. Friday I woke at 4 and was at work by 7.15. At 6.30 I met with current and former colleagues in Richmond. I was wrapped too tight with nerves and had to make excuses. I knew I would be fine after a few slugs. I drank fast to numb myself.
We stood outside the White Cross. People arrived and conversations broke out. Much of the time I stood to one side with people's backs facing me. At one point I got talking to an intelligent woman I've known for a few years. I tried to ask her perceptive questions. We talked about photography briefly and she said, trying to be funny I think, "Are you disappearing up your own fundament now?" I looked nonplussed. I couldn't quite see what she meant.
"Up your own arse." And she laughed. "I understand that's what happens to photographers after a while."
I gave my usual account - explaining how I knew little about the subject and treated it as play.
We dined at the Rustica. My meal was bad. I felt dreadful. I probably stank a little. I ordered wine and beer and drank as much as possible. I had nothing to say to anyone. I knew I was different from all of them. They probably knew it too. On my Father's grave, if he has a grave, which is unlikely, that was the last time for me. I'll never mix with those people again. I was the first one to leave. It was game over. Voodoo death.
Yesterday I Googled the Lady Of The Flowers and saw she was in the media again. I read that her mother had died. Strangely, it hit me quite hard. To be fair, it was probably all part of generally losing the plot. I got drunk of course, and later that evening the feeling of perpetual failure hung heavy on me. I began talking to myself, giving an imaginary interview if you like. I wrote my history of loneliness in reasonable, detached terms. I'm 41 next week. The last girlfriend I had was in 1976.
Up my own arse. It's easily done.
An abrupt end tonight. I don't see the point in going on.
http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/ (had to be done).
Another thousand words or so. I suppose I'll keep working on it while I can. High tides and big scores. Late night lock-ins, pub crawls and drunken deals; Twickenham Ale, Doners in fresh naan, Palma ham, Cassoulet, fried breakfasts, rugby fans, rowers and Starbucks Espresso. Budweiser, roll-ups, red wine and Whisky. Minnows in Water Lane. Haircut at the Greek's. Steve Allen chews the fat with his son - relishing the scandal. Four pasties at £1.50. Onion rings at 2 for a pound. Diet Coke on two 6-packs for £3. I dream of the seven and break into the last, tiny bud. I have to be insane to fall asleep. On the pack of cards on the floor a note: 'Aquarian Nazi.'
Let it all go if you can. Imagine she imagines.
The captain's name was Morgan
By Christ, he was a gorgon
Ten times a day sweet tunes he'd play
On his fuckin' organ
It calls to me, for all I know, every night; even being so much of a cipher - a holding action in my mind. Last night was the same: Apartments instead of tents; a workmate wasted, me acknowledging; running; running up hills; running and holding the hand of the girl in front of me; talking to organisers - all women. At the end the hunt for the mushrooms. Tent City. Posh Birds. Part of me must have been moved against my volition and awareness. It was so much like pedestrian business. Matter-of-course. Incredible that I seemed to see nothing, to feel nothing, and yet something inside was moved so much; through the wind of acting, through the curtain of nothing. Through the fog.
Hunger worries. What a prick. I've been eating like a prince.
Short of cash, but Iceland have a deal on for 4x440ml cans of Bud for 4 pounds. Except that a lot of the time they are 568ml cans and the till can't tell the difference. I'm on my last one (more in the fridge) but have half a glass of Ardbeg left. Whisky, yes. The best part of a bottle of Ardbeg and nearly a whole one of Cragganmore. I drink to the notes, feelings and slippery cows everywhere. An elephant walks into a bar and the barmaid says hello Mr Beer. Yes, shit, that had them going 30-odd years ago. Plenty of beer. No more though. Not these big cans. Ardbeg.
Thoughts of next week. Meetings. Photo optimisation. Training an arrogant one on Thursday. I am conscious of the fact that my mind is not working properly. Why not invest everything - or a least a lot - in a woman you'll never have; maybe never even speak to again? It makes for a kind of narrative, and compared to the shite detritus of superficial trash and minutiae my neurons are grinding out most of the time it seems fine - from an aesthetic point of view. On one level (the Prime Reality one) it's at the Idiot Stage. I know, I've been through it a few times. It's always the same. It never changes maybe. I'm still the same arsehole I was 30 years ago, 20 years ago, 15 years ago. Always going the wrong way in their minds. Always going the wrong way in my mind. Always useless. The wrong material essentially.
What do I think of her - the Lady of the Flowers, the lady who plays Henry the Fifth? Therein lies everything - because if I'm honest - so honest I almost forget what I am - then I would say I don't know. I say that because this is supposed to be everything and I know nothing - or something: Something that has never worked. I know something which is nothing. A sense of complete ignorance.
Good to be fucked then. Laugh and I raise my glass bastards. Walking away.
Sense of time there. Of words slipping away from me.
White screen.
Yes, white screen moron.
Everything was in suspension. It didn't seem real. I was surfing a virtual world, belief in intermission, and no sense of myself. Creep mode. Optimum Empathetic Simulation - sans the old Terminator-style Head-up Display.
Don't blame me though. That's the way it goes.
Time for slow music. Time for time again.
It's in the past and will slip further away from me forever. Then I'll slip away and so will you, until only the words remain. A lesson in how to appear serious without making a fool of yourself. Hacking at the ice with an axe. Convulsions giving birth to sentences. Coming to the machine with no hope. Staring at the last line. Making shapes.
Laughing, showing off the bold white Eyetooth, a little move forwards, head facing him of course, her fingers move over the scar tissue below her knee. Her toes in the Wellington point in my direction. The shape of the tip of the boot stuns me.
Strange reality bomb, to be back. I have little to say at the moment. I'm working on a story which has me by the balls. I could wait until it's finished; but then, I couldn't. Two people in the last two weeks have told me that they like the site.
You see how broken the mirror.
Photos here. I'll be working on the story for the next three days. If I could get it finished this month it would be something.
Well met.
Into the arms of the witch...the rain witch, the trip witch, the music, night-sound, voices, fires in the dark pulsing, throbbing witch. I leave tomorrow at 9.30 heading West. Should get there just after midday. For the last 36 hours I have been a babbling maniac; talking over plans and essentials to the wall - to the other me. Rain is forcast. Much rain.
I have a 20-year-old, 65-litre Karrimor Panther rucksack, a cheap nylon shoulder bag and a Lowe Alpine butt pack. I have 150 grammes of Golden Virginia, 20 American Spirit yellows, 6 packs of green Rizlas, about 150 filters, Immodium, Ibuprofen, Trifluoperazine, Duck Tape, two Maglites, a swissy, my passport, cutlery, plate, cups and clothes; 3 polo shirts, 4 T-shirts, a hoodie, North Face camping trousers, baggy Rohans (discontinued), Brasher boots, 6 pairs of Wilsons socks, 6 pairs of black briefs, an emergency poncho and a Boony hat. I have a stereo am/fm radio with headphones, 3 sets of earplugs, an eyeglass repair kit, prescription mirrorshades, a sowing kit, an airbed (with repair kit), an airbed pump, a three-man, 3-season Vango Delta 300+, a 3-season sleeping bag and a 20-year-old Karrimat that has been everywhere. I have soap, toothpaste, floss and a small tube of shampoo; I have a towel and eyemask, a Pentax Optio 550 compact digital camera with a spare battery and two spare SD cards. I have my mobile with essential numbers and contacts, my card wallet, plenty of cash, a cheque book with three cheques left, two filled Clipper lighters, a spare flint and two hash pipes. I have plasters, Compeed, Witchdoctor and paracord with a breaking strength of over 500lbs. I have a Berghaus Gortex jacket, Sympatex trousers and gaiters. I have a portable ashtray, a Platypus 1-litre water bottle, a medium-sized moleskine notebook, three pens, half a toilet roll, hundreds of stickers with the name of this domain printed on them for the portaloos, a small tin for draw, a list of my favourite women, a solar-powered watch, a handkerchief, a Celtic/Pagan green-highlighted pewter pendant, essential keys, a spare plug for the airbed, a bus ticket to Bristol Temple Meads, a site pass, essential paperwork; maps, guides, instructions, appointment letter, a layout map of Ped Gate D; business cards, a credit card that seems to work, sunblock, two tobacco tins, three boxes of mints, two tins of Budweiser and a battered copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
I have a failing body, fat belly, crumbling teeth, fogged vision, fluttering heart, thinning hair, dry mouth, bad breath, damaged lungs and liver, thin wrists, twisted fingers, boring life, bad past, and a broken mind.
I carry all this with me onto the site in one fell swoop from whatever gate I get landed at. I pack it up; wet and muddied, in 8 or 9 days time. And bring it back with me.
The site is just over 100 miles away. We start to party Tuesday night. I'm leading a team of 50. If I make it through it will be a small miracle.
Glastonbury in less than three weeks. Something might conspire to stop me from getting there - whatever. There are plans. The shit is to hit the fan - in the doubled sense of the meaning at least. I may weep on arrival. I may feel as though I have come home again. I may go down while I'm there from hunger or exhaustion or too much tripping or too much of another life.
And weeks have passed since I was last here. I have been watching Children of Men (deeply disturbing), Stella Street (genius), the Henry Miller tapes and High Plains Drifter (Pale Rider). I have been reading Black Spring, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (more than 30 times now?) and True Hallucinations - all de nouveau, so to speak. True Hallucinations in particular has impressed me anew. I have been stunned at the depth of eloquence. Even the notes from the various journals resonate with purity; with innocence and hope. Dennis McKenna...
February 28, 1971
I approach these pages with a peculiar sense of urgency as a man might who had confronted an unexplainable phenomenon as some impossible creation of dreams or unaccountable natural principle. The task facing such a man would be a very subtle one; that is, to describe the phenomenon as accurately as possible. My task is compounded by the fact that the phenomenon I must try to describe has itself to do with the very tools of description; i.e., language. This rather peculiar statement will begin to make more sense as we explore the concept more fully.
Before going further; something tells me it is necessary to consider who I am. Twenty-four hours ago I thought I knew - now this has become the most perplexing question I have ever been confronted with. The questions leading from it will provide the answers that will allow us to understand and use the phenomenon which is so difficult to describe. These may be the last characters of a crude language that I will ever apply to the description of anything; since the phenomenon begins at the edge of language, where the concept-forming faculty gropes but finds no words, I must be careful to avoid not distinguishing between mere language-symbol-metaphor and the reality I am attempting to apply it to.
Madness, all of it, but a better and more beautiful madness than the septic tank of stupidity which seems to govern this sober world.
The television sits in the corner, equilateral, equiangular and equidistant. We watch the world we mangle around us on this flat screen; gongoozled. Usually a squawking, supercilious prick appears; a cross between a trick-cyclist and a penny oracle. The prick is always neatly dressed and free from impurities. We are dealt a goose-egg every time, without fail. If an actual human being were to appear and look down, gather themselves truly and then look to one side and speak the truth without shame it would represent nothing less than a miracle. The press is just as bad. Cheney's Halliburton stock rose by over 3,000% last year; we are torturing detainees to death in Iraq and Afghanistan; the rich are becoming richer, the poor poorer - the list goes on and on. Few people seem knowing or bothered if they do, especially the people who should care the most - the people with the loudest voices. If we are wise then we are gorgonized inside and call it preoccupation. We dance a cotillion - while outside a terrific storm rages. It seems that no-one can break with the elaborate steps, the memes, the trance, to stop and look out into the night at the beauty of it. The beauty, that is, of the more complex and polytonal glissandos of the wind; and the primal, frenetic dance of the trees; and the glitter and encroachment of the rain. This being nature's magical glossolalia. Step outside and you feel the pellicle of rain on your body like a foetal membrane: Then you are born again. But inside the safe and warm dilittantes dance the cotillion and must remember every step and gesture. This is their algorithm, our algorithm, I should say...my algorithm. Murder and rain happen elsewhere. Life happens elsewhere, perhaps in the future, when we are dead. Culture is not your friend.
Bad thoughts and gloomy writing on this grey eternal night after five days off. And despite all Glastonbury calls: The common ground, the feeling field, the stoned circle. With a little luck I'll be lying on the ground yet and soaring high. I'll be there, goddess willing, back in the living, tumescent now and working for the poor (and myself); which is the best work there is.
For the moment, this moment, the same old. I am here and you are there. My belly is full, as usual. The fridge is stacked with drinks. The rolling tobacco sits by my side. Eight-o-six and work tomorrow. The past is behind us and a distant moment in time calls to me sibilantly.
Five days; five rotations. A stormy cold night and a rosy fingered dawn thrown into the bargain. Chavs in doorways kill my tale and bring out the swastika in me. The frustrations of the street. Fear of dental problems. Waiting in line. Houmous and bread. Spicy chicken wings on offer. No queue in the off-license though. No queue at the newsagents. Six Dab at 5% for a five spot.
There are boys who knew a boy once, men now, and the boy and boys and men and the man I am now seem far away. So much so that the realm of the elves seems closer. I am even learning their language. No, only The High calls to me now, to ravish me, to press me down into the earth and free my soul. She is my virago.
At this time Vortigern was King of Britain; a man calculated neither for the field nor the council, but wholly given up to the lusts of the flesh, the slave of every vice: a character of insatiable avarice, ungovernable pride, and polluted by his lusts. To complete the picture, as we read in the History of the Britons, he had defiled his own daughter, who was lured to the participation of such a crime by the hope of sharing his kingdom, and she had born him a son. Regardless of his treasures at this dreadful juncture, and wasting the resources of the kingdom in riotous living, he was awake only to the blandishments of abandoned women.
- Gesta Regum Anglorum
Wizards know their times:
Deep night, dark night, the silent of the night,
The time of night when Troy was set on fire;
The time when screech-owls cry and ban-dogs howl,
And spirits walk and ghosts break up their graves,
That time best fits the work we have in hand.
- Henry IV Part II
Legends of Alexander, Jesus and Mary Magdalene, King Arthur and the Holy Grail,
the Golden Age and the Greys, travail by rules and modern psychology. When you
live in world of fiction it seems tempting to create your own. And what could
be better than to fully believe in it? To summon up an alternative scatter-brained
Daedalian ritualistic labyrinth haunted by the phantom of imminence seems true
enough - especially when there is nothing else to do but toil on the corpse
of a rotting culture. So the madman is blessed...and for that matter the junkie
too.
Now I play the cards, or a minesweeper/freecell/solitaire combo, for women and power and bowls of dried mushrooms. I play for another reality. This is the Travail by Rules, which you must overcome to attain salvation. You either win or die, or you are enslaved forever. The master will not receive visitors at the moment. He is in musth. Look to the stars and you may see him there. There will be issue.
I would live in the past, but that boy is dead and the days of my transition seem like a poor delivery, a no ball...only there is no umpire or referee to call in the judgement. So I'm left with nothing tangible. I am left with a dream and a few eight-millimetre video cassettes. I am left with a paper fish and a birthday card from my Mother from which the money had been taken - not that it made any difference. Somewhere I have a drawing of a figure in anguish, head in hands. I have an '87 Zippo with a loose lid and a ripped copy of the Oxford Psalter. I have some scrawled notes and the Glastonbury '89 showcard.
I carry the shame with me. It seems indistinguishable from the disease. I carry my ignorance with me and I carry it out on to the street.
Dream then...and save yourself. Say you have played the last game. And believe it. You lost.
I see that the last entry here was on the twenty-third of April; at twelve minutes past one no less. The days have rolled by like the roar and blur of a fast freight train through a station as you stand on the platform in anticipation and recollection: Nothing bar a temporary tedium come agony that washes over you and rattles you with the thought that it may never end and that some people end their days in this way; in torture.
People. Yes, there are people. Sometimes we squawk at each other like obdurate, pixilated parrots. It's a language of pure insanity. Should you stop for a moment you will find the residuum echoing in your head; it is a parody of your soul - which is obviously worthless. It is the stricture. We must carry on. To stop and stare is to regress, to take the piss.
Carry the umbra through the days wrapped around with fashion and patois. Keep it safe and warm and hidden; in suspension, in death; Then drop; drop out; try to gather up all the moments in one: So the dragonfly by the hidden door still coruscates inches from my eyes; so my Father still drives the wagon by my side; so my feet still rest on the sill towards the oak that breathes incandescence in a loving, giving sun; the sun of youth; the sun of salvation and redemption. So the voices still rise through my canvass walls as I lay stretched out in bliss. You see here and there the loci: Here is the footbridge under which I sat after scraping together the £2.00 fare to Egham, broken and exploded, carried from the drama centre by police and security; here is the landing on which I stood in terror and gawped at a sea of maggots at the foot of the stairs during a fever at the age of eight or nine; here is Bushy and the cold winters on benches with a cheap notebook and cheap grey shoes; then the summers there and visions of the future, dreams of a young boy growing up in utopia and falling in love; Here is Kew; here is the seat where the longed-haired Asian stood by me at the station; here is the waterfall; here are the bars, the endless bars; and here is the corner of the room in Claremont Road where I saw the Aztec pyramid in green and blue and floated in rapture and felicity to the notes of Santana after the last of the brew. Here is the room in Beechtree Avenue where I wept and held a blade to my wrist and eventually went crazy, losing everything apart from my life.
Days with a common factor: And me here right now carving out some semblance of this life in words; looking for the truth, which is to say, looking for the moment of affect. Because when all is said and done then that moment, the moment when I may be able to reach you, pissing in the wind though I may be, the moment when you may think of me, that moment is all that is left. That moment is the best of me: And then, in a sense, I can still see the leaves, my Father, the Aztec pyramid, and I can still feel the notes and voices unfold around me. This is the only proximity I have. And if it doesn't work now it might do one day; the bark may become a song and I may be able to hammer a jewel into shape.
There are huge blocks of my life which are gone forever. Huge blocks gone, scattered, wasted in talk, action, reminiscence, dream. There was never any time when I was living one life, the life of a husband, a lover, a friend. Wherever I was, whatever I was engaged in, I was leading multiple lives. Thus, whatever it is that I choose to regard as my story is lost, drowned, indisollubly fused with the lives, the drama, the stories of others.
Onwards then. One life among billions; to be snuffed out for sure like all the rest. Bear that in mind.
A fox stopped to stare at me as I smoked at the window. I pointed and said again, 'I see you.' Yesterday I took to wandering with the camera. I sat on a bench in the gardens around Orleans Gallery and lit a cigarette, a little despondent with the light and lack of success. Life was flat. I looked down and saw a solitary ant between my boots. He was going about his life. I was going about mine. He had his dimension; I had mine.
Plainsong quivers from eight speakers. I have three bottles of beer left in the fridge. Good news. Beer delivers an effervescent high. It is better than whisky, which wraps around you tightly, and the blurring effect of wine. Only 40 days to Glastonbury, possibly less. Then we will see, one way or another.
Nothing changes; but everything changes. So then; there are endless possibilities and no possibilities. If there is another life why can't I see it? Why can't I taste it? You see, I can't rely on myself to make the right decision. Only when the lights shimmer and I am gone, gone, gone...only then do I feel comfortable in my own company. The solution is always a chemical one; the one that delivers - at a price. Time for another beer. I forgot to mention - I went to the fridge. With the last one I will need sour mash. After that, I'll check into Castle Anthrax. Then the masturbation. At the moment I'm going long on Mexican women with big tits. It's good to have some kind of structure.
Back then to the world. Falling, falling into imaginary arms; a perversion so extreme it's unendurable. Better to be the sacrificial lamb; better to sit at the head of the heaving oak table soaking up the dance of the princesses; a goddess as a consort, avatars on the watch, fire roaring, Rome defeated, eagles in the sky, witches at work, anything but imagine that a living soul is moving towards me now.
Dope will get you through times with no money better than money will get you through times with no dope.
- Freewheelin' Franklin Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers
"I used to prepare a pipe for my husband. It was the morphine he took for the wounds he suffered in his heart. He would rage and he would cry, my little soldier. And I said to him: 'There are two of you, don't you see, one that kills and one that loves' and he said to me 'I don't know whether I am an animal or a god.' But you are both... All that matters is that you are alive. You are alive, captain. That's the truth."
- Roxanne - Apocalypse Now (Redux)
I'm rolling my own now, on a strict budget and no end in sight. It's a great way to lose weight. I just need to make sure I can get to Glastonbury in 55 days.
The Fear was on me...and I retreated to the room. I imagined multiple me's from my life looking on. I may have been wiser in the past. Wisdom might erode with time and distraction. The child in me gazed on in shock from the corner of the room. The twenty-two year-old put his hand to my arm. I lay in the bed gripped with the size of the debt facing me. Falstaff's day was done, even at the turning of the tide.
So what? I could be her...
All my heroes are on the other side: Henry Miller, Terence McKenna, Spalding Gray, William Shakespeare, Hunter Thompson, Syd Barrett, Nick Drake, Paul Giovanni, Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart...
I can taste the dust from the book I just took off the shelf. My eye stings.
During lunch breaks I retire to the gardens to smoke, my belly empty. I look at the flowers. I am in Eden while the world falls apart. I am becoming conscious, like many people I suspect, that we may not have much time left. Perhaps another five years. It neatly coincides with the end of the Mayan calendar, McKenna's 2012 - the end of the Time Wave. I can almost believe it. We have all we need to kill ourselves soon.
I dreamt the other night of saying goodbye to Nan. She appeared before me, in some private club setting - just as I remembered her from the 1970's. I hugged her...and for a fleeting moment had a sense of her body in my arms; that delicate, strange body that had been wracked over the years with late nights, cheap food, cheap spirits, filter tips, depression, birth, cancer, osteoporosis, stupidity, bastard partners and powerful medication. In the dream she left and reappeared again, then left finally.
Last night I dreamt I hurt my hand at Glastonbury. As a doctor healed me with some such magic or power of thought I found myself tripping, hallucinating, joyously.
I have so much, in a sense, but I feel lost and alone. As The Fear pinned me I turned to my parents for solace. I felt that it is to be loved that matters the most - and that was all. And I can still walk in the gardens. I can still have my belly filled. I can still bring the wine to my lips and draw the smoke into my lungs. I can still wrap myself in a clean bed.
Days come and go, and these days coming are going to be hard, even at Glastonbury.
Like most other people I am looking for a blessing. I want revelation and satori. One waits and waits, and then one begins to chatter. After a while you cannot see yourself and you cannot hear yourself. The culture is a white noise in your ears and you squawk like a maniac to drown it out. Only when you run away is there hope. Only when the star-like souls begin to orbit the light above your bed are you on your way. When the thunder comes and your heart is removed and your piece is sealed with a loving kiss you are going back to the womb. Then you need love more than ever. But I guess for some it is the bughouse and a worse hell. Well, in any case, those benthic days are gone. I'm back on the surface now.
I am in the light, but at night I dream of being with someone...and there is no-one: not even a glimmer or spark. As I said before, I may have never left any impression, other than a kind of pity perhaps. So I conjure them up in my mind's eye; loving, lewd, drunk, tender, stoned, crazy, ruthless, knowing all the time that there is a wall around each and every one of them, knowing that there is another man, a real man, not a ghost, who is with them now or in their thoughts. But then, again, I could be her...
"Each morning the dreary walk to the American Express, and each morning the inevitable answer from the clerk. Dashing here and there like a bedbug, gathering butts now and then, sometimes furtively, sometimes brazenly; sitting down on a bench and squeezing my guts to stop the gnawing..."
I see you, Henry. And there are times when I see through you: When the magic is gone; when we live in the dirt; when the message is lost; when the music has stopped: The technique. The individual hammer blows. Then there is nothing.
Walk the streets in paranoia - optimum functional psychosis - believing you are sane. Regard the flower and you see it is like any other. Chain your tongue with whisky. Drop with a dying fall. Everything fails, including this - especially this. This is the life of the lost high.
So you stop and stare at the screen...in expectation. You remember your past and cannot face the future. You consider our position in the galaxy and the super-massive black hole at the centre. You rake up the days looking for moments, conversation and meaning. You are being bludgeoned by the knowledge that you are scratching out your life in the sand on an empty beach, and even if a stranger should pass by they will think it nothing but that you are wasting your time and theirs. The lines in the sand mean little to them - like a scrawl they saw elsewhere. They carry on unmoved. They cannot help you and you cannot help them. Your furrowed words seem like just more than the bark of the ignorant; they are like the whine of a desperate trickster; a faker. If only you had realised earlier, instead of making a fool of yourself and believing you could reach all the way to someone's core. How little you knew yourself.
This is my bark then, my song, and you can step over my dirty corpse without batting an eyelid. You can stare at this wall of words with disdain and pass by. I have nothing to offer you, more than likely. Only an idiot would make it thus far (for all I know).
Jazz plays, slow and drunk. I can smell the Ardbeg in the coffee by my side. I take a swig. It tastes rich.
I don't want this to end, because when the end comes I know I'll move to the window to smoke and gaze at the wall of Elder with bright green leaves lit by street light and the dead, sloping sepia branches and I will wonder what to do, whether to begin the lie again or no; to spin like a clockwork toy with words or whisky or piss in the wind again for salvation from above. It's bound to be another neutral night in Nirvana, playing solitaire for ideas.
But time enough.
I drink to Will, who got born and died this day they say...
"Nay, sure, he's not in hell: he's in Arthur's
bosom, if ever man went to Arthur's bosom. A' made
a finer end and went away an it had been any
christom child; a' parted even just between twelve
and one, even at the turning o' the tide: for after
I saw him fumble with the sheets and play with
flowers and smile upon his fingers' ends, I knew
there was but one way; for his nose was as sharp as
a pen, and a' babbled of green fields. 'How now,
sir John!' quoth I. 'what, man! be o' good
cheer.' So a' cried out 'God, God, God!' three or
four times. Now I, to comfort him, bid him a'
should not think of God; I hoped there was no need
to trouble himself with any such thoughts yet. So
a' bade me lay more clothes on his feet: I put my
hand into the bed and felt them, and they were as
cold as any stone; then I felt to his knees, and
they were as cold as any stone, and so upward and
upward, and all was as cold as any stone."
"I grant you, friends, if that you should fright the ladies out of their wits, they would have no more discretion but to hang us: but I will aggravate my voice so that I will roar you as gently as any sucking dove; I will roar you an 'twere any nightingale."
Bottom - A Midsummer Night's Dream
Yesterday...the sun shone...I walked to the local...
Hallucinated snippets of conversation. People on the street. The taste of garlic gives rise to the memories of the smell of farts. I had to keep typing until the pain in the arse left the bar.
Interlude:
"Are you not coming back?"
"No - I'm meeting my boyfriend...seeya!"
He was still there, the pain in the arse.
Now the gangly blonde has walked in. She is chatting with the golf man. He has just started smoking.
Random low-key conversation.
I chatted with the new proto barman about the boat race. He reads from the newspaper...
"They sound really enthusiastic about it in here: 'One to watch; best of the rest: Oxford race Cambridge up the Thames from Putney to Mortlake for the 153rd time...'"
Now Mr Pain In The Arse faces me, taking tokes on his cigarette. He leans against the bar. No doubt his mobiles are on his belt and the keys hang from his waist.
Random low-key conversation. The golf man talks about sprinklers on the green.
My chin twitches. I forget what that means. I believe it is associated with thinking. The golf man is called outside. Someone is refusing to enter perhaps? Gruff voice. The landlord?
The golf man returns. The pain in the arse has drained his second pint. Two people leave.
"You are looking very serious there Mr Light"
"Oh it's very serious ______"
"Work?"
"Just my own stuff..."
He goes to the toilet for the second time. Now - third beer or leave? He seems in two minds...
Random low-key conversation. The sound of cutlery being sorted.
Sally up to the bar. The same conversation we have been having for the last five months: About insects.
Shit - pint number three.
Try not to think.
Finally the pain in the arse leaves. Bennie and The Jets comes over the speakers. Merciful Christ, the Easter Bunny and its magic eggs, take me away from here.
Later...
I looked at a list of twelve women on the laptop; a mandala of sorts. Pornography means nothing to me now. The lists are everything. I nursed a stubby erection under the table. My belly was full of glue and Plaster of Paris. All food is paste, with an undertone of plastic. It clogs the soul. You eat in a rage of boredom then regret it. Last Saturday I went for a meal with friends at the Jun Ming and attacked the table with fury - with a view to shock and awe. We drank Gavy and Tsing Tao and Irish Coffees and rounds of Maotai at a 106% proof. I whittled away the week from there until another training session on Thursday. I covered the syllabus (Livelink) but the class was dead and I let them go early.
Dreams of women. I vaguely remember them. Taking photos on Friday. A dead loss. Get the Scotch out now. The future is a white screen.
Littlefang should do it (floorplan #1, floorplan #2). I'll need modifications; a bigger adamantite curtain wall with towers, a proper gate tower with a drawbridge and another level to the keep. A self-sustaining micro-ecology and 36 supernatural wives. We could dance in the halls of astral awareness for eternity, providing we could keep the politics to a minimum. It would be Gormanghast on dope. A Tiberian playpen.
No such luck though, in any universe: You'll strain your cock in the early stages, discover Hubbard, succumb to paranoia, or else the gabbing of the head wife will make you want to slit your own throat. You'll get bored after 176 years and turn to pulp; unrecognisable. You'll begin to dine on gobbets from the dog's nose, or believe yourself the reincarnation of Sawney Bean.
So much for that shit. If there should be an afterlife I imagine it to be hectic, fluid, surreal, unexpected - and vaguely dissapointing - until, that is, the time came to give yourself over willingly to nothing: Like your body, your money, your house, your ideas; your soul to be recycled. An End of Time: What greater miracle can there be? Hang on...Why not skip the interlude and go straight to nothing? I have nagging doubts though: It seems too clean, too logical, too easy. One thing you learn is that the shit never ends, even when you win the lottery, even when the 20-year-old bursting out of her top goes down on you, even as the office burns to the ground the bastards are warming up the hot site and looking at the recovery point objective.
The best we have done so far is to say everything sprang from nothing in an instant for no reason. That is the cutting edge of science today. What fools.
We have such a long way to go. And we have come so far. Not far enough though.
Whereto this summer Sunday evening? A deck of cards. One to twenty is the six of clubs. Coming down is the King of Hearts. The Riverman seems like three of a kind. Festivals are deuces wild. I'm now holding a pair of tens - in the scheme of things. Enough to win the hand. Still, after all these years, my thoughts take me West. Please forgive me.
"God give them wisdom that have it; and those that are fools, let them use their talents."
Feste - Twelfth Night
The Wheel of Fortune. The Sun. The Lovers. An auspicious spread. The past, the
present and the future. I am in the Sun then, though it does not shine here;
not for many days. The wheel is done; say no more; the course is set. Dawn in
a few hours; leading to summer. Stop. Cast yourself into the water and ride
the waves.
I saw him with what was probably his mother. His head was bent sharply to one side and his gait vexed. I saw nothing for a moment; twitching a kiss. The woman looked determined; dug in. I lose these moments faster now. I lose all the moments. Thirteen days of nothing. If someone passed a thought in my direction I wouldn't know it. I was another body on the street, another Venti Cappuccino, another number 3, another 6 Peronis, another idiot at the desk, another voice on the phone, another auto signature. Should someone say they thought of me I would think it nothing. You come to imagine a disaster would bring relief.
...
Now it shines, even in the back room of The Clubhouse...in the dark. It is Sunday. I ordered a roast and a cheese plate. Barclaycard are declining any more cash. The bill lies on the floor, unopened.
"And after a little debate I order a heavy Burgundy instead of the usual vin ordinaire. I am hoping all this will distract me. The wine ought to make me a little drowsy..."
Grande reserve de Rivage Bordeaux and 63% left on the battery. The pace at the bar has been frenetic. I've blown over twenty-five quid so far in the space of about 40 minutes.
Whereto from here - that is the question...
Stop.
Stop.
Stop.
The same message over and over. Arrange the divisions on the border, deploy the Sea Furies, bomb Tokyo with Vulcans, arm the avatars with self-repeating crossbows, squeeze the tits on the head girl. Dream of something - anything. Drink, drink, drink for England.
More silence now, as the big family left. I stroke my head and nurse my belly. Whereto from here...
Another phone call. An email. Move.
If you score 52 what do you get; 18 of a kind or a choice of twelve? Do you keep a house in London or put everything into an Earthship in Wiltshire?
Around me are 180,000 lives, from Hampton to Barnes, from Heathfield to East Sheen. One man wears a bowler hat, another lives on a raft, one man cuts his wife down in Farsi, another scratches a violin for gear. What do you make of that, you damn fool? The longer you live the more dreams you see die. I imagine some guy working in an office over the shops, an estate agent perhaps, or an insurance clerk. I think of him nearly every time I walk down Heath Road towards The Green. Down there you can still find places in a time warp, places that would cause bewilderment just 500 yards away. The Dip is The Dip, Galen's is Galen's. Mr Cohen plies his trade there yet. Benny keeps cutting hair. You can still buy a brass horseshoe, Formica, a flute, a moped and smelling salts.
Imagine, then, this poor bastard at his desk by the window watching the street life below and sensing his life slip away, caught between eras and classes like an ant in the tips of your fingers. Feel him there; that tiny life being held firmly by time and three dimensions: Selling golf balls at Fulwell, stealing inner tubes for the Crane, an uncle playing the spoons, the smell of his father's roll-ups, the stink of the urinals, bags of winkles, mangles and jars of Brylcreem. You throw this history against the wall in front of him, in stereoscope if you like, and he can make no sense of it. He cannot see how he got from there to here, or indeed why he was there in the first place - or why he is here...
Better then to move away, physically or spiritually, but he is paralysed with commitment and debt, and afraid of the unknown. He acknowledges his loss. His whole life is this acknowledgement.
'Deploy' is the word of the moment. Deploy is the word everyone wants to use. You can deploy anything - software, cash, resources, ideas, mechanised divisions...
Another week is over. God knows how many it has been now.
Nothing is more hopeless than a scheme of merriment.
- Samuel Johnson
"I found that what I desired all my life was not to live - if what others are doing is called living - but to express myself. I realized that I never had the least interest in living, but only in this which I am doing now, something which is parallel to life, of it at the same time, and beyond it. What is true interests me scarcely at all, nor even what is real; only that interests me which I imagine to be, that which I had stifled every day in order to live. Whether I die today or tomorrow is of no importance to me, never has been, but that today even, after years of effort, I cannot say what I think and feel - that bothers me, that rankles. From childhood on I can see myself on the track of this spectre, enjoying nothing, desiring nothing but this power, this ability. Everything else is a lie - everything I ever did or said and which did not bear upon this. And that is pretty much the greater part of my life."
- Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn
We will draw the curtain and show you the picture...dumbed down in the now. An idle, shallow thing...
Heart fluttering. What does that mean? Fridge was fixed and blew again. Aunt on the phone in tears. England beat France. Photos. Fantasies of dining with either Kate Adie or Ségolène Royal at the Boxwood Café, perhaps on consecutive nights; back to Rutland Gardens in the limo for Illy and the Jackhammer. It's gone...the mechanism...for some time now. All the phones are switched off. I dreamt of being shot under the ribs. It was luxury. Clean exit wound. Rush at seeing the blood. Training last week. Exhaustion on Friday. Session in the evening. Dead days though. No fear - only anxiety. I did impeticos thy gratillity; for Malvolio's nose is no whipstock: my lady has a white hand, and the Myrmidons are no bottle-ale houses.
Too old by heaven. Indeed; the living and the dead...
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The dead leave a memory; and bones or ashes, a name and moments in time.
Moments in time.
"State of mind. State of mind. Let me tell you a little story about state of mind..."
"If I could make that resemble something in me..."
"If this fall into thy hand, revolve..."
Night; night again. Find the dark space and move to the realm. Retire to your chambers and watch the darkness. End it now. We live again sometime soon.
Light entertainment for general amusement.
Lunar eclipse 2007 - Twickenham Riverside (Canon EOS 20D - 75-300mm USM lens):
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You try to stop the chattering and observe; just as Krishnamurti said. Here I am, eyes full of motes, glasses flecked with specks of dead skin, Abadengo by my side, wondering when the next cigarette will be. The fridge-freezer has blown, the condenser dryer is on, Anugama plays, the water is on the hob and I am about to dine on week-old bolognese. Take a sip of wine, toast the gentler days which never existed and see what occurs to you.
I'm going to cook the mince in some of the Abadengo. Wine from 60-year-old vines and week-old mince from a broken fridge. I'll finish the bottle, finish this and finish myself...
Sunrise; sunset. Sleep and dreams. I'm often underground with the Orcs and the Elves. Or at festivals, short of money. Rupert Sheldrake appeared in another. We talked about Terence.
I have made two big mistakes in the last two years; both involving women who deserved more: A young women who came up to me on Ped Gate D at Glastonbury in 2005. She was with a police officer and was trying to ask me if it was OK to navigate the site...from the inside. I had no idea what she was babbling about; I had ten things on my mind. We had an incoherent conversation for 30 seconds and she cracked on me: She had been robbed and lost everything (no ticket; no wristband - but she was in). She cried and I walked away. I had done enough damage. The other Stewards moved in.
Another woman; a co-worker; given the short shrift; sent crazy in a bad room and nudged out at a loss. I played a part in that; the part of The Man - the straight, embedded, gone-to-seed Nazi. One way or another, she was screwed - by expediency, an idiot...and me.
Now I am bloated - sick - and the libation has been made. Goddess help me. A Raven called me to arms and a big seed hangs from a broken branch outside: I hacked it with a Masai sword. A woman with cancer asks for help - and I can give none. Another woman browses the site; long lost. The bed is there and a desert when I close my eyes; a desert of true lies.
Enough.
Six o'clock. Every book in the house unreadable and every thought a scam - even that one. No escape other than to score. Five months now on the tinny voice of quick time. A desert, as I say, of true lies, and where's the fucking bar John.
The Ivy glistens with the rain. All my dreams seem vain.
Then what, you arsehole?
A plane, the rain, the music, the breeze on my back and water to my lips. The Moon last night. A car in the distance. The last game to play. Sit like Holmes with one arm akimbo, smoking. There are likely to be other days.
I came here again to open my heart to something divine and sacred. The weekend has been bleak; a fugue of frustration and surrender. I watched the hours waste away, listening to my chest wheeze, going to the scales and seeing the weight gained. The smell of shitty farts in our office lingered as the principal memory of the week.
I went out on Saturday night and took some photos...not many. Every one is pointless for all I know. Some...
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I walked round to Waitrose and bought more food to kill me and make me look uglier. I had a dizzy spell at the checkout and nearly fainted. The funk segued into Sunday, with me playing Solitaire over and over - with real cards, that is.
Even when I win I lose. I cast the net over the days and come back with nothing. I see the Kevin Carter image in my mind's eye - lying in bed - and actually smile; it's relief at the reality; a safety valve kicking in and reminding me...
Blair is unapologetic about the invasion. Current spin is pitching an improvement. Things are even better in Baghdad, and our boys in the South may be coming home soon. It's bullshit of course: That's the one thing you can be sure of.
I'm on my last beer. Then port or whisky. Memories or feelings - or the world and its lies. Hidden fantasies. Perhaps a conceit or two. Old friends from the past. Some possible future. A starving girl on her last legs. A vulture waiting. A hose from the exhaust and a suicide note...
"I am depressed ... without phone ... money for rent ... money for child support ... money for debts ... money!!! ... I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings & corpses & anger & pain ... of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners..."
Crank up Alphaville then and do a switch. Whisky...
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But the pace is always more complicated: The plan is always a lie; a thing to hang your equilibrium on. In other words; Uigeadail and a wank - then on to the Dow's Finest Reserve. Just like old England. I may put a smoking jacket on and oil my pistol. The port glass was on the heater, unwashed. The base was warm. The rain is coming tomorrow and the knot in your gut is your friend. Open yourself to the old days. See how flat Nexus is - pure expediency. This is your revolution. The candles burn; giving warmth.
"There are times when reality becomes too complex for oral communication. But legend gives it a form by which it pervades the whole world."
Henry has gone to seed and is broken on the emptiness. He speaks Russian and wears a tie. His last words are "save those who weep..."
"Element number seven ceases to function..."
I am living in a twilight memory - no more, no less. These days will fade...like tears in the rain.
She is a seductress, third class. And Virginia is a flower encompassing me, bucking with the orgasm. Laurie dances in killer's blood. She flicks the rims of her soaked stockings and later that night wraps her wings around me. We move to the realm. I'm Prince Prospero. We dine on spit roast with stropharia and nectar and one thousand year-old wine. Virginia's tits are loaded with pure DMT and MAO inhibitors. They nearly kill me...even at my level. Emboss the logo on a syringe and shoot up.
Au revoir, Mr Caution.
"Was there ever any man thus beaten out of season,
When in the why and the wherefore is neither rhyme
nor reason?"
- A Comedy of Errors
A nothing. Outside it's raining. A drunk, really soused, was shouting wanker a while ago. In a few days it is Valentine's day. I bought three cards. I have no idea why. I bought them from two guys with Downs Syndrome at the Civic Centre - plus one smiling carer.
"Three pounds!" One of the guys said, wide-eyed.
I think I had a Valentine's once; a long time ago; I can't remember - 20 or 30 years.
I was training on Thursday in our nearly new venue. It snowed. Next week I need to do some work on pages for people with learning disabilities. Most of the work has already been done. I only need to clean up the images - Photosymbols - and migrate the content to new templates in the database. If that sounds geeky don't be fooled; it's just plod work. I need to switch off, maybe close down Outlook and put the phone on divert. I got bored playing with the photo package - trying to recreate what I thought was a poorly edited image on one of the existing pages; a navigation image for community support services. After a few tries at getting a similar montage I vandalised it...
At some stage this job will bite and I will dig in. It has to be ready by the end of the month.
Dig in, like right now; a month out of the loop; getting weaker, fatter, more out of breath. Lemmy Caution said in Alphaville that people had become slaves to probability. My emerging bald patch looks tanned. A lucky break - or a trick of the light.
A cousin died, in tragic circumstances, at the age of 33. I went to the funeral a couple of weeks ago. I began to sing a hymn and then stopped. I don't want to go that way. I want no priest spouting bullshit. I want my ashes scattered at Runnymede, by Kingswood and the RAF Memorial; residue to residue.
I gave up drinking for two days. I was half thinking I would get the shakes, but nothing happened.
At the first lick of snow, a couple of weeks ago, I took some rushed photos. Two...
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Silence follows despair. I dream of being wrapped in wings; leading the blood hunt of the young demons; killing the killers with hook blades and cleaning the world. All the news seems bad. Dream of revolution and empty your balls. You kick the metal box and the alarm goes off, lightning flashes and you are in Half-Life, running for the door. In a limo with a cool guy slapping a fan through the open window. Miniguns, floods and wrestling snake-women. The cuff of a jumper makes a good leg warmer for an amputee and you try to download an mpeg of two students screwing the band. We dream as we live - mostly in pictures. Crack open another can, throw something on toast and pull the smoke into your lungs. One day you will live again.
A nothing.
Noam Chomsky - Illegal but Legitimate.
"Ye must have by your side a long da-pacem,
As true men ride by the way for to unbrace them,
Take their money, cut their throats; thus overface them:
'I will', say ye."
Mischief - Mankind
Off this week. Going crazy with cabin fever. The levee broke this morning at about seven. I attacked the room and had a major cull, which is ongoing. The shelves have been dusted and reordered. I'm getting rid of about 50 books. Text books, reference books, old novels, Chambers biographical, the Larousse, Halliwell's, an old complete works, erotica, books on paganism. This is the core...
A lot of other stuff got done. It's past nine o'clock and I have not had a drink.
I've dreamt of Glastonbury: Making a meal for a group of troublesome trannies who had been barred from both the 'Harry Potter' bars. I dreamt I was an incarnation of Sergeant Howie on Summerisle and came to wonder whether to put socks on before they killed me - thinking of the pain the burning soles of my Brashers would cause...thinking socks might help. Ewen McGregor was Lord Summerisle and I killed him good with an assault rifle but he came back as the king. An old style copper came to rescue me in the end - but he was on their side.
I had planned to do something big. No big things though. Live to fight another day.
"How to become conscious? It's very dangerous, you know. It doesn't necessarily mean that you will have two automobiles and your own home with a pipe organ in it. It means that you will have to suffer still more - that's the first thing to realize. But you won't be dead, you won't be indifferent, you won't be insensitive, you won't be alarmed and panicky, you won't be jittery, you won't throw rotten eggs because you don't understand. You will want to understand everything, even the disagreeable things. You will want to accept more and more - even what seems hostile, evil, threatening. Yes, you will become more and more like God. You won't have to answer an advertisement in the newspaper in order to find out how to talk with God. God will be with you all the time. And if I know what I am talking about, you will listen more and talk less."
Henry Miller - The Air Conditioned Nightmare
May 12, 1971
"I have almost two months' perspective on the events surrounding our experience at La Chorrera, and I can clearly recognise that both my brother and I evinced the classic symptoms of two generally distinguished categories of process schizophrenia. He appeared to manifest the withdrawn characteristics of essential schizophrenia while my behaviour was of a more outward and paranoid sort. Nevertheless, I am unable to make the assumption that our experiment was therefore "nothing but" two simultaneously occurring cases of schizophrenia. With the full knowledge that such a position argues that I may still be experiencing residual symptoms of the illness, I maintain that we were in fact dealing with an objective phenomenon that, though of a highly peculiar nature inexorably bound up with psychic processes, does have its basis in the molecular ideas we were in the process of investigating. As empirical evidence of this viewpoint, I mention the following points, which seem to me to set our experience outside the realm of mental illness..."
Terence McKenna - True Hallucinations
The smile on the face of the clown is that of the atrophied virgin. Talking and smiling has pumped up a plenum of terror in his skull...and his soul has gone mad. You can tell by the orbit of the eye and the light that shines from it; both his left and right hemispheres are diseased. This man is a fool by proxy because he cannot believe in love - and perhaps never will. He lives in a world of ghosts in which love exists as the bolted ideal; the ultimate idea, but our clown, never tasting it, lives apart - hysterical. He wants to be everyone's friend. Consequently he is despised and ridiculed.
The strongman's wife may make him bigos and rye bread, she may even put her arm around him now and then, but he knows in his soul that at midnight he sleeps alone while the strongman and the wife share a secret he will never be privy to. They live in the realm he is banished from. What's more, the clown sees just one dimension - the bigos and the arm and the rye bread - and can only guess at the love and the pleasure they share. Maybe there is more; he is not to know. His soul, trapped, went mad long ago. The smile was the final action: The last assault against the world. If only his brain would stop chattering its loyalty song the smile might die. It might work, if he just looked straight into the night and saw nothing. Then the second soul, the emergency soul, might burn his brain-pan and send him soft. Then they would come - the angels and the demons: The black hole of his mind would draw them in. Then he would have plenty to think about.
He is lost, this other you, in a world of fantasy. So cheap and sordid and shallow is the world he occupies that he represents an apology. Real satori is likely to come in the guise of a weed or a primary decomposer. If it comes by death it will be measured in molecules, heartbeats, phone calls and cab fares. He is the first card you will play as your ego is obliterated. He is a pillenwerfer. He is a parody. Two enormous testicles hover over his head; symbolising his virility.
Represents masculine culture, money and society - which have also made her the archetypal victim by drowning her in corruption. She is obsessed with appearance and wears many masks. She signifies superfluity and blindness. She is an engine of crime, injustice, war and guilt. She is the betrayer of womanhood. Masquerades as a champion of emotion and creativity - both of which she is secretly afraid of. She wears a cross of two enamelled white stools. A superficial historical romance rests on her lap.
She is adorned in a tight suit and moves like a swan. Her white stockings give you the illusion, when you remember her, that she is blonde, but the next time you see her you realise this as a falsehood. When you look at her you see a mixture of pain and perfection, but the pain is actually projected by you. You feel pain because she represents perfection and your presence trespass. At one point you notice the roots of her toes at the front of her shoes - but you cannot imagine what her feet may be like - and you will never see them as long as you live - which will immediately drive part of you permanently mad. You know that in the future her 13-year-old daughter will make a poorly dressed man feel nervous on a train as it passes through an immaculate Home Counties railway station. In the clean grey light he will have a sense that he has entered an idealised representation of his country.
Illusion of mastery, control and progress, with many incarnations. Actually the harbinger of murder, poverty and miasma. As time passes you grow to hate him, but he is everywhere and nowhere, so the hatred and despair you radiate is reflected back on to you. You come to believe in a challenger, but the challenger is actually the emperor in disguise. His manifestations blur like doodled portraits on a spinning rolodex for 12,000 years - until the reign of madness ends and the reign of death begins. He hates illegal drugs, but paradoxically is the reason everyone takes them.
A sick, cosmic joke; a displacement figure; the need to add toenail clippings to every made artifact - arrowheads, cooking utensils, gramophones, hand-rolled cigarettes. After Crowley: 'Authoritative denial of the truth or by promising compensations in other states of existence implying the possibility of knowledge derived from sources other than the unaided investigation of nature through the senses and the intellect. Progenitor of the praeter-human intelligence, able and willing to communicate, through the medium of a certain chosen man (himself), truths which could not otherwise be known. Feels justified in demanding faith, since the evidence of the senses and the mind cannot confirm his statements. The evidence from prophecy and miracle is valid only in so far as it goes to the credit of the man through whom the communication is made. It establishes that he is in possession of knowledge and power different from those enjoyed by the rest of mankind.' Women and unbelievers are invariably filth children. Bound to the High Priestess, he is compelled to insult her friends and the staff in restaurants - and then pay for the meal to illustrate his wealth and influence. Secretly the chefs have spat in his food. In his left hand he holds the gold key to his Audi, in his right, hidden by two fingers in a card sharp gesture he learnt at grammar school, is the American Express card.
Hope and salvation, Christ help you. Somehow you cast your soul into the storm, thinking it doomed perhaps, but she is there, somewhere, to save you. Whispered conversation in the dark. An arm resting over you and laughter; a hand on the side of your head, steadying you. Surrender and acts of charity. The taste of her skin and the weight of her. Reality.
The febrile anticipation of the silence that can crush your soul with fatigue. A chimera of movement. A white screen with fourteen more headers to fill. Desperation at your own inability for progress and conclusion.
An act of individual charity, kindness and forgiveness. Nursing the sick. Feeding the hungry. Visiting the imprisoned. Making yourself vulnerable and taking the consequences. A knowledge and recognition of pleasure and joy. Role-playing, acting, loving irony and sarcasm.
The old fool who cannot score. He lives on a diet of poison. Represents boredom, constipation and the inability to reach a satisfying denouement - or erection.
This is the storm, the cry of the birth pang and the coming of death in all its forms. The runaway train. Russian solitaire. This is the first orgasm, the crucifixion, the burning, the rapture and the straight road. This is the end of days.
Signifies death, friendship and LSD. Her motto is "You don't have to do anything." Conveys the message that meaning comes after the event - so we suffer to live again. She holds the scales of the dealer in her left hand: In her right hand the carving knife to cut the solid after it has been in the microwave for 7 seconds.
The True Man, The Happy Man; The willing fool sun god unemployed imbiber smoker who survives the sacrifice to live through the summer heat. This man is the antidote and ultimately judges us all. He is everything to everyone; yet remains himself. A woman will glance at him with furtive interest on the street as she talks to her friend whilst walking in the early evening after he has collected his medication and slowly ruminates - his long hair ruffled on the sides of his head.
Singularity. Island of bool. At once clement, Rhadamanthine and foolish. Holds a mirror into which we are terrified to glance, lest we see the face of a moron trapped in living hell. The bashaw of time. A mugwump.
The modulation of a single note to create the illusion of forward momentum.
Joy, artistry, secret knowledge, a fire on a cold night, strong, dark beer. The smell of hops, barley and fried onions. Vices, soaring highs, coming into the pussy, mushrooms in the quad in winter, a living soul, the key to the gates of love, salvation and redemption. The shatterer of the mirror of death. The derider, the lampooner, the comedienne, the untrimmed bush, the emancipated, the free.
The structure off the motorway you will walk by as an evacuee when the apocalypse comes in 2012 - a water tower, a grain silo, a gunpowder tower. Represents the other face of your country - the one you saw in the eighties as a salesman when there was some hope left.
White fire in the night. Having to clean the wallpaper after 48 hours. Dots of tears and mothers milk on a black scrim sackcloth, black eyes and pale splayed spade feet holding a kitten between her legs. Dope for tea. Backfires, Cheat, Joni Mitchell, Miles Davis, improvised ashtrays and stolen furniture. Wire coat hanger cables and a cool breeze at midnight. This card represents communication and travel on the Astral Plane. The higher order.
The Lady of The Flowers. The woman who plays Henry V. The woman with mannish feet. In heaven she walks barefoot on the grass to be with you. On the prime material plane she makes you the fool. Two cats fighting on drapes during a storm. Creativity. Thought. The Soul.
Apollo, Adonis, the youth. The Fool in fulfillment of his dream. The music festival, the flooded terrace, the Boony hat. The tree surgeon, the squatter and the temp. Silk Cut or Marlboro Lights and ripped jeans are emblematic; so is the inability to pay for drinks at the bar - but still be able to secure beverages and intoxicants for himself and his friends. The whites of his eyes shine with unblemished innocence.
The whey-faced and bearded apparition that guards the path to revelation, the Dutch hooker, white crystals, teenage girls and Usenet. The sententious fool who lives in the best room at The House of Laughing Men. His judgement is eternal, preferential, inaffable, unproductive, worthless and always comes when you least expect it. He is a pasquinade, a pinchbeck, an idiot.
Decision. Fate. Birth. The mother and her mad sibling. The brown furrowed bark of an old tree set against the backdrop of a Tudor lodge in which something was lost. Looking out of Plato's Cave through a kaleidoscope. The cry of the fox and the rookery through the bars on the window; pissing against a heras fence in the rain. Brown hands and drinking air. The fruits and the loom. Blood on the floor and vomiting at midday. The spinning top and the cassoulet. The electric earth. The wet grass.
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