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Blue
silverWhen my tongue blabs, then let mine eyes not see.
- Twelfth Night
I am in a tent, a Vango, an identical one next to me. We have bought them on
the Team, but now we are at a festival, possibly Wychwood (a Wychwood,
at least). The weather is good. I lie in the porch and talk to folk-types. I
go for a walk. It is pre-festival. I see a young man eager to get served a burger.
He is too eager, too hepped-up. What is his problem, I think? I am smoking a
joint, wandering around. I begin to overtake a group in front of me. A young
chap is tailing at the back, also smoking a joint. Here, I say, and
we do a swap. He has hash, I have skunk.
"Which university?"
"Edinburgh. But I was going to Cambridge."
"Which college?"
"There was no college. It was a secret area. A hidden part of the university.
We were to work on top-secret projects."
Now I notice he is massive. He is towering over me.
"You in a boat?"
He smiles: "Yes, the Edinburgh crew. Do you want to try something?"
"What have you got?"
Here he gets out a small tin containing what looks like crushed brown crystals
and a tiny ceramic ashtray.
"Dried Reindeer Urine."
He puts some of the crystals in the small ashtray and hands me a gas lighter.
Suddenly, briefly, I see what looks like my mother walking past, but it isn't
her. I light the crystals and lower my head to inhale. A young woman joins us.
She wants some too, but I have burnt it up and inhaled everything.
I have half an idea to carry on with the porno until it reaches a conclusion. I want Jeremy Paxman to recover after I have fucked every female participant of Newsnight and the Newsnight Review. Then, at the climax, he is on his push bike in town and gets splattered by Peterbilt tanker which hits him at a speed of at least 150mph (perhaps rockets on the back) and then crashes into the Houses of Parliament killing nearly all of the MPs and the whole cabinet, including Gordon Brown, in a huge fireball. I'm in the stern of a Hymer nearby, rimming Emily Maitlis and looking over her back out the rear of the bedroom cabin. I can see Jeremy on his bike, and know from the ferocious speed of the Peterbilt that he barely had time to glance to his side before he was spread over the front grille. At that very moment I come into Kirsty Wark's mouth.
It's a rum deal, but somebody should do it.
Well, whatever. It's the gallery again. And she turned up again. I showed her my book.
Oh...you got Henry Miller in there. He's one of my favourite authors...
Cue the hole in the floor. I have just been hit by the Yamato.
I gave her my last copy.
Night-time. I sunk five bottles of Peroni and went down the pubs - hunting for the crew. I found two of them, drunk. Big Bill didn't do the sauce justice; not with St John, or Sir Toby, or Feste. Not such a dark place as it is. Why not treat it lightly though? After all, look at the Hell-side...
But here I am now, and I've learnt my place
And everything's just as it seems
And the colour of wonder drains from my face
And the whole wide world's up on screen
But I've see no more more than that little boy saw
I've certainly seen nothing new
The Thinker stands on the brink of eureka
Dizzy with déjà vu...
Nice one Chris. I like your face. I like your smile. You are the man now.
So much for this Sunday night. Sometimes it goes left-handed. And then you need help. You need the moon.
Yet
sit and see;
Minding true things by what their mock'ries be.
- Henry V - Act 4
Stables Gallery again, yesterday now. Exhibition by the London Disability Arts Forum. Disabled artists. Some severely disabled visitors, even when we had just opened. The brochure accompanying the display is moving. So much suffering. It makes my blubber and yellow teeth look...
Later I read about Action T4.
I feel the need to confess, to say my heart is 'fracted and corroborate'.
Hippos being ferried across the river in rowing boats. A crocodile scrapes my arm. Its claw is like a parrot's beak or an elephant's toe. I move away. It's too dangerous. It is the apocalypse. A friend must kill his wife. The forces of evil must find a boy. They send a well-groomed matriarch to do the job. I lose track of her. The world is falling apart. It is in ribbons - paly, no less. There isn't even any television. We must move with legerity, but everyone is too bloated or soft to fight for themselves.
Half way through she walks in. I am floored. Who is this woman? Why is she talking to me? More specifically, why is she talking to me about art and The Wasteland? Why does she seem so nervous and so beautiful? When she leaves I find myself paralysed. I sit there staring into space. You do not play for a woman like that. She toys with you. She breaks your legs in the first minute.
Much later. I cannot sleep. Night wraps around the living city bringing the illusion of clean air. In the distance a truck. CCTV scans the embankment; there is a camera just outside my window. I know some of the people who work in the control room.
Now entertain conjecture of a time
When creeping murmur and the poring dark
Fills the wide vessel of the universe.
It's hard now Bill, what with the street lights and the traffic and the cameras. I'm wired up to the hilt; the mobile, the land line, broadband, dial-up, the television, at least three radios...
It's not like the old days, when the boys used to play in the fields under the stars, when Sir John heard the bells at midnight and woke to the gadflies playing in dappled sunlight and loped to the earliest inn to begin that awl-like thrust into the pitch of dark again. It was night all the time for old St John. We are fucked now, plugged in to every hell and madness on Earth twenty-four hours a day. Good evening, here is the news...
Night time again. So soon. I have done nothing. Another week beckons. And another bad night. There is nothing I can do to stop that. You cannot escape by thinking.
Eliot seems as dead as dry bones. Rat's feet on broken glass. It was a time of high manners, and he read too much, too much of what was already dead, sucked bloodless by the straw men. Move away from him. Move into music.
Enough.
A
twelfth [spell] I know;
when I see aloft upon a tree
A corpse swinging from a rope,
Then I cut and paint runes
So that the man walks
And speaks with me.
- Hávamál
This being the twenty-seventh day of April in the year of our Lord Jesus Christ two thousand and eight.
A grey day in the stables gallery. Quite a few people now. It's Springtime Safari day!; I am a volunteer invigilator; there are tents in the grounds; the Ice Maiden is here; people come and go...
...speaking of Michelangelo.
Actually, no. Definitely no Michelangelo here today. Pen and ink, fibreglass, ceramics, multimedia. I'm looking after the stables, as I have meant to do for the last four weeks. It's a chance to get out of the flat. I'm back at work during the week, copywriting and editing for a two-thousand page government website. One of the best of its type in the country apparently.
The Ice Maiden cometh...
How's it going? Have you been busy?
Yeah, it's been OK.
Many people?
Well, we've only just started.
I'm sure that shouldn't be here... And she takes away a microphone stand,
presumably used by the minister for culture at the opening a few days ago.
Yep, I'm feeling better thanks. I'm not sure what happened, but they say it was viral. I was feeling ill and depressed for a long time. Then I got a cold and it got worse. I was off work, and then back, and then off again. A couple of women in the office joked about man-flu. My doctor told me to stop wasting her time, but the virus was attacking my heart and my liver, I was vomiting and coughing, and when my ankles swelled up like balloons and my cock swelled up like a Hoover tube the second medico told me to get down to A&E - right now, and the doctor there asked me if it was always like this and he wanted to check me for HIV and alcoholism because the first rule of medicine is always to shift blame onto the patient. Then they did an ultrasound and freaked because 90% of my heart had stopped working and my liver had stopped and then two junior doctors, they all look the same, they all look a little like you but younger and even thinner, tried to put a direct line into my heart and it was pure slapstick out of Catch-22 or 1984 and I'll never trust those fuckers again. Five weeks of being prodded around, molested by wandering fruitcakes, 85-year-old hags trying to get into bed with you, kleptomaniacs trying to steal from you - every day - and succeeding quite often. Nutters screaming at you that they want to smash your head in. Shit on the floor and blood in the toilets, the worst food you will ever eat, nurses who speak in Filipino and squawk and shriek and laugh in intensive care all night and no sleep at all. And the sight of those clean, middle-class junior doctors and their stethoscopes makes me puke now. What a fucking shower. I wanted to sue them for £174,791,263.52.
But I'm getting better now thanks, and I really wish you would talk to me, even if it would be difficult to keep my eyes off you.
Or maybe it would be difficult to look at her.
How converse.
Two months since I published The Gate. I have not sold a single copy, though a few people told me that they would buy one. I feel blessed. It would be a tremendous achievement to not sell even one copy, and if it was just one copy part of me would be forever fear-paranoid over who bought it. My ultimate ambition is a to have a whole portfolio of work that absolutely no-one has ever read apart from myself. Then I would like to get cancer - preferably lung cancer - and die in my own shit in a fly-blown NHS Hell-hole.
As the Lord is My Witness, it would make me feel wonderful. And Godspeed the half.
sahyluhns
awl enjins...sometime he angers me
With telling me of the mouldwarp and the ant,
Of the dreamer Merlin and his prophecies,
And of a dragon and a finless fish,
A clip-wing'd griffin and a moulten raven,
A couching lion and a ramping cat,
And such a deal of skimble-skamble stuff
As puts me from my faith.
- Henry IV, Part I
Put a Toad to the Woman's breast,
that she may suckle him 'till she die,
& he become gross with her milk.
Atalanta fugiens - Emblem 5
In the walled woods by the river...a dragon in nocturne. Its belly distended
after the gorge, its concubines laying about it in tranquil, naked and obeying
sleep, it drifts in a waking dream. Inside outside it moves here and there;
a slinking cat with inner eyes like moonlit lances, a trotting fox consuming
the rolling scrim landscape, a hovering fish in dark and primal suspension,
an angry and timid rat taking a wall like a cultural historical torpedo, a fearful
child looking into the shadows of the cupboard, an innocent lurker who fears
for his eyes lest his hate destroy them on impulse, a lonely, solitary soul
breaking through the night with a scab of fatalistic remorse, a skittish robin
dancing on nature's memory like the tip of an epee in the hands of a terrified
fool, a queen bee buzzing with her short-circuit brain, her hive wrapped around
her like a hairy womb.
By the river upstream it finds another mind - a mind in a false repose, and yet like its own, in partibus, but crucified - and it senses death. It sees that the lower astral plane nymph is blocking the third eye. It is the Hanging Man. Images flicker like a cinematograph showing random fistfuls of film from the cutting-room floor. Petty vendettas and paranoias. False judgments, cries for help.
'Help me.'
The dragon plants a seed.
'Eat and kill.'
Eat for pleasure. Eat for sleep. Eat to make your enemies hunger. Kill your mind. Kill your ideas. Kill your worries. Kill the world. Kill yourself if need be.
The dragon is chaotic neutral. It feels only for the self. But it sees in this mind the germ of chaos...to be set to roam free.
Back to work. After six months of sickness following viral myocarditis. Glastonbury is confirmed. This year I have the lowest possible expectations. For the first time ever I am not bouncing off the walls in anticipation. I fully expect it to be bad...again. But it must be done. Back on the sauce of course. Highs and lows. The lows are pretty rough now. The highs are just me feeling normal and not thinking too much.
I Dream. I am in a hospital, very sick. Trev (my old boss) enters waving a wad of paper - a job offer for Bill (my uncle). How much? I ask. Fifteen thousand a year. Are you crazy! I shout, he's already on twenty-eight thousand a year! Trev walks across the room and throws the wad out of the window. Suddenly I am back in the Civic Centre. I walk into a lift with two young women - an overweight Aussie brunette and an auburn-haired English type - the kind who would have been a prefect at a low-grade Catholic girl's school. We take some seats - there are rows of plastic seats. They sit behind me. I feel a needle go into my right arm - near the shoulder - right through my tweed jacket. On the way out of the lift I quiz the Aussie - saying that I felt something go into my arm. The Aussie fesses up, and says she has been going round the Civic injecting people with vitamin K - as a health measure apparently.
We are walking back to their department - Environment. I'm angry. Who is your boss? It's so-and-so, but he's off today. Then who is your boss's boss? It's so and so. The Aussie is upset now. She and the prefect are on the other side of the office. There is a kerfuffle. The Aussie is crying 'cause she know's she's done wrong. She should have been open. She should have asked me to fill in a form. She thought she could get away with it in my case - just slip it in and tick me off the list. I feel a little twang of regret and sorrow. Her life is pathetic and she will probably lose her job.
I go into the chief's office and spill the beans. He is a typical prick of a director, smiling me down. Do you know the amount of gear I am taking? I reel it off; furosemide, bisoprolol, ramipril, spironolactone, thiamine, warfarin, folic acid, trifluoperazine, my anger rising. This guy is screwed. He needs to cover his arse. He is smiling me off. I leave and return to my own office. My boss is there and we begin to play around with antique telephones. I pick one up, holding it at arms length, and to my surprise hear a voice on the line. I hand it to my boss.
It's people from the department. They want to meet with us immediately. Suddenly the room fills with suits - petty executives who would have a hard time passing a Turing Test. We engage in argument. One of them makes an off-hand comment (which slips my mind now) and I tear into him. He replies matter-of-factly; It was just an ad-lib spontaneous impulse. Ad-lib spontaneous impulse! I'll give you an ad-lib spontaneous impulse! - and I begin to rant.
After the rant I stomp out of the room and then I find myself outside, in car park at night by an unfamiliar building. I enter the building and see that is some kind of working man's fitness club. I must climb upwards. I enter a circular stairwell and find it getting narrower and narrower until I am nearly stuck. Suddenly I am in the basement car park of the Civic Centre. I take a lift to ground level. It is still dark and I am on the streets. I begin to run through the night...
The Brother is hot & dry, & therefore very Cholerick. The Sister is cold & moist, having much Phlegmatick matter in her. Which two Natures, so different in their Temper, agree best in fruitfulness, Love, & Propagation of Children. For as Fire will not easily be struck out of the hardest Bodies, Steel & Steel, nor out of those brittle Bodies, Flint & Flint, but from the hard & brittle, that is, Steel & Flint, so neither from a burning Male & Fiery Female, nor from both of 'em being cold (for cold is the unfruitfulness of the Male) can a living offspring be produced. But he must be hot & she more cold than he, for in Human Temperament, the hottest Woman is colder that the coldest Man, supposing him to be in Health, as Levinus Semnius, in his book of the Hidden Miracles of Nature affirms. The Sister, therefore, & Brother are rightly joined by the Philosophers.
And the dragon sleeps on...in statu quo. It paints the face of a tyrant in the guise of a clown and cuts his heart out by the molecule. It snuffs out a lonely soul and enters the mind of a young girl. It stands segreant in her room, its pizzle extended and rampant, and offers the heart, its arms arranged in an odd contortion. It moves on her and rapes her till she flashes with lightning. It kills a sick baby, moves a man to suicide, kicks the rat off the wall, makes eddies on the water, licks the face of a raven, breaks the toe of a dog, ruffles the leaves, fills the account of a risker, drugs the cup of a priest, sucks the milk from a goat, drinks the blood of a child, plants the seeds of war and the hope of peace. Dream on dragon. You mean nothing to me.
Dear
Henry,I hope and believe that this is the last time I will talk about you in such a way. Several things have conspired to drive me to the conclusion that you are beyond the usual analysis, and therefore beyond The Academy.
I'll use your words freely, as they were meant to be used, but let your secular life, as such, slip into the shadows - or the light, as it may be.
Some months ago I was invited to write an article for the Nexus Journal, which, as you may or may not know, is devoted to your life and work - from an academic perspective. I sweated on the subject for a while; thinking that I might write a prose poem, or a letter to you, and then, finally, a passage of doggerel on the subject of how unclassifiable you are. The title was to be along the lines of Henry Miller and The Eclectic Dialectic: Towards a Post-Post-Modern and Post-Structuralist View That The Academy Stinks Like a Rat's Arse. You can see how doomed it was.
The editor of the journal had seemed to offer me a modicum of praise for my college dissertation on The Rosy Cruxifixion, written some ten years ago. I had always thought it was shit, and said so clearly on my website, but now I began to doubt my own instinct. I removed belittling comments from the introduction. Then I went 'on-line' and bought all five volumes of the journal, having them delivered from the States a couple of weeks ago.
It was a mostly depressing and painful business, reading what people said about you. But I read with great interest your own, previously unpublished, words. In your letter to Gershon Legman in '38...
I write fast, when I write, and I seldom correct. I cut largely and sometimes completely rewrite, but I am not a fiddler and a plumber.
For me the clincher came from your letter to Kate Millett in '69...
In the past I was gracious and foolish enough to take the time to read dozens of theses sent to me not only from America but from other parts of the world. I no longer do. I discourage any one attempting to write a thesis. To my mind theses have no value whatsoever.
I gave up then. It was over. But you were still on my mind. I still had a feeling, again; an instinct, to reveal and disgorge what you did to me, to understand myself why you are so important to me.
I began with an abortion. I moved away from my immediate life and thoughts and reeled off a thousand word piece of fiction written in the first person perspective. It was a burlesque episode about an absurd sexual encounter with an unlikely minor celebrity. I chewed it up and spat it out. It tasted like shit. To Hell with it, I thought. Go back to the roots. Go back to the within.
Then, back to the self and the soul: It's five-twenty a.m. here now. I woke at three. Satre said that three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do. But things may have changed since then. The world clock has got weirder. Now it's five o'clock which is too late or early, or nothing at all, or every hour of the day.
You draw from life and the inner life, and from your eyes and ears. This is what you have to offer - yourself. No sleight of hand, no homage to form. There you stand, and here are the words. There can be no greater power, it seems to me, than to express the act of being, and not a fiction, or a form, or a genre or convention. This is what so much poetry does - it draws from within. You used prose, the most amazing prose ever written for all I know, to shatter the frozen walls within us. What reward for such a man? How do we remember him?
In the same way you are supposed to remember any great man. That is, by letting his expressions enrich you...and so guide you. In your case with the world of art. Somebody once asked a modern seer how we can fight the tribulations of the world. His reply was; By creating art. I knew at 17 that I wanted to be a writer. It wasn't until I read you that I began to see how. I found a copy of Tropic of Cancer while working at a library. I knew nothing of you or the book, but I felt immediately that it would be the greatest book I would ever read. Can you believe that? That moment is fixed in my memory. Afterwards came Capricorn, and then The Rosy Crucifixion. As for the latter, well, I can't see how any other written text could better prepare a young writer. You made the process, the transition, seem like apotheosis. And you evoked the ghosts of Van Gogh, Gottfried Benn, Arthur Machen, Mikhail Artsybashev, Oswald Spengler, Knut Hamsun, Dostoievsky, Sherwood Anderson, John Milton, Mikhail Bakunin, William Blake, Jacob Böehme, Joseph Conrad, Theodore Dreiser, Rimbaud, Paul Valéry, Élie Faure, Anatole France, Issa-San, Maupassant, Nietzsche, Occam, Albertus Magnus, Gogol, Hokusai, Wilhelm Reich, Strindberg, Lady Murasaki, Miguel de Unamuno...
Just a few, really, just a few, and a veritable army of ghosts. I was electrified, moreso because so many of my fellows and co-workers had never heard of you, or misunderstood you when they had. I had discovered a secret.
I began to laugh a lot, hysterically sometimes, as I poughed through the books. In much the same way, I confess, as I used to laugh later at college when I discovered Marijuana. I laughed because it seemed so preposterous - and staggeringly wonderful at the same time.
Henry, it's time for me to move on - back to myself. It's day now. I slept badly, fearfully (I seem to be coming down with a cold - a situation which nearly killed me a few months ago). I woke fitfully, not really sure that I had been sleeping, then slept again. I had a dream of the most sordid kind: I was an onlooker at an orgy of Latin men and women - and deformed cupids. Men and cupids walked around with erections, occassionally sucking each other off, and the women were twenty-four carat sluts. Watching one performance from close-up I found myself with a ferocious hard-on. Then a slut pulled down my trousers and took my cock out. It felt like it was going to explode. Suddenly the glans became massive and red, the neck very small, and it extended into the shape and proportions of a dog-cock. The woman laughed and began massaging and teasing it. Slowly, it reformed into a normal shape, though still large.
A strange thing happened: The woman became invisible, and only then embarked on sucking me off. I was frustrated, as I so much wanted to see the action, but I could see nothing but my cock swaying to-and-fro, although I could feel her mouth and tongue working me.
It was too much even for me. I awoke in a shock. I took a handful of various tablets and vitamins. My physical presence disgusts me. Many's the time I feel like a slave: Taking my Soma like a good citizen - just as in Brave New World. You can see that I appear to be a weak man - no pugilist or soldier here, no Blaise Cendrars. But I can be strong and brave, like you, Henry. I can bend in the wind. Every day I plot my crime. And one day I may join you.
So long Henry, I'll leave you now.
...
DecoherenceI have wished in some way to sketch these ornaments in the figure which each one may reproduce according to his own fancy. It is a condition, however, that you do not commit any fault, however small, against the mystical symmetry for fear of introducing by your negligence a new discipline into these hieroglyphic measurements; for it is very necessary that during the succeeding progression in time they must be neither disturbed nor destroyed. This is much more profound than we are able to indicate, even if we wished to do so, in this small book, for we teach Truth, the daughter of Time, God willing.
Theorem XXIII, Monas
Hieroglyphica
- John Dee
I thought I might write to Henry Miller, even though he is in the realm of the dead. Dead or not, it would be better for him to read this without such a conceit. I wanted to tell him what he perhaps already knows: That the world, if anything, has gotten even worse, that Larry and Alfred died ten years after he did. I wanted to tell him about physics, about 9/11 and the War On Terror and the War On Drugs. I wanted to say that his daughter and his son still loved him very much. I couldn't pull it off. It seemed unnatural. Forced.
I was lying in bed a few weeks ago when a voice came into my head. It was the voice of Terence McKenna. He said: "Whatever you told me wasn't true."
They come to me now and then, you see, sometimes as words and sometimes in dreams. Mostly Terence and Henry. I wonder what kind of world they live in now; from a state of pure oblivion, to a dream state, to a firm régime like the hotel in Wings of Fame. Perhaps the afterlife is as corrupt and fallible as the earth we inhabit. Perhaps it has yet to exist. Perhaps they are still building it.
Forgive me, but I've been reading about Quantum Mechanics...to expose myself again to the new thinking. The book was a piece of shit - one of those 'dummies guides' type of comic book. I noticed it cost £6.99 (I got it from the library) and other books in the series included introductions to Freud, psychology and post-modernism. More bullshit, I thought. I spent my time between the pages, Wikipedia and another website. I felt that if I could at least grasp something of the nature of the subject it would move me to a clearer understanding of how untenable my current position is. The collapse of the wave function seemed central - to the human question, that is. But the implications are largely ignored. Physicists shy away from philosophy. Is the role of the scientist now not dissimilar to the role of the sage? What then, is the role of the artist? And is it not true that the role of the mother remains the most unchanged?
That was all going through my mind.
But it isn't Art.
I'm back to the chattering idiot stage, with a weak but recovering heart, walking occasionally, taking photos, spending too much time on-line...
I watched a snail...crawl along the edge of a straight razor...
A drink by my side. The music dead. Tears sometimes. Dreams are flat. Sleep is difficult - charged like a dead live wire with white noise in repose on a cold, stainless steel counter, the cries of the suffering and dying boxed up, men raping women boxed up, the final moments boxed up. Each moment breaks down with a transient whimper and you spasm and throw yourself on the next episode. To go or not to go; you can't stay here for sure. Look at yourself. Disgust. Despair. Distract the eyes. Every song sounds like a broken faucet or the rattle of bones. Every moment you touch is broken. Roll on then - to better days. And bring out the big guns.
The mystical sign of the Ram, composed of two semicircles connected by one common point, is very justly attributed to the place of the equinoctial nycthemeron, because the period of twenty-four hours divided by means of the equinox denotes most secret proportions.
This I have said in respect of the Earth.
Secret proportions.
At last, the rain comes. A double dose tonight. Storms to follow and more life. A Robin or two flits around the exterior view...
As I lay deep in Faerie Castle, crucified at bliss on a circular bed in the domed chamber, looking out on the Oort Cloud through a diamond cupola, pots of scented and physic incense filling the room with membranes of intoxicating mist, C and N enter gently to touch.
How empty. Better by far to hold her while she vomits, to watch her eat, to feel the soles of her feet. A little fart perhaps.
Don't even mention the sessions...
Where are you now, Henry? On your own or with the ancestors? Whatever it is it's not what we know...not what we can know.
Soteriology. Transmutation. Modulation. Variation.
Gaia. Miracle.
To this Claude replied: 'You're essentially a man of faith. A man of great faith...'
Eschaton.
Sometimes I think I'm an artist. Once in a while I even think I may be a visionary, but never a prophet, a seer. What I have to contribute must be done in a roundabout way.
Eros.
The cursed crocodile became to me the object of more horror than all the rest. I was compelled to live with him; and (as was always the case in my dreams) for centuries. Sometimes I escaped, and found myself in Chinese houses. All the feet of the tables, sofas, etc., soon became instinct with life: the abominable head of the crocodile, and his leering eyes, looked out at me, multiplied into ten thousand repetitions; and I stood loathing and fascinated. So often did this hideous reptile haunt my dreams...
Adyta.
Sunday now. A temporal division towards the end. Shadows cast back in time. But 2012 will come and go - and Terence will look like more of a fool, even after his prediction for '95. I look to the future. If a hand reached out I would die.
The
Gate seems finished now. At least, I can't face it any more. It's a little
shy of 20,000 words, so in the Novella territory, which is nice.
It's 100% pure, guaranteed filth. I think you'll find that it's the most vile and disgusting piece of literature you'll ever read.
You can buy the paperback at http://www.lulu.com/content/2074501, or just print off the page for the price of the paper and ink. Hopefully it should be OK with a screen reader. The text is exactly the same, but the paperback is an easier read for the sighted. It's best read stoned for sure, and when I'm better I plan to revisit it after a smoke.
I designed the cover in Photoshop. It's simple, but I really like it.
Nothing much else has been happening. I've been ticking over. I published some new photos over at the Falstaff site. I feel a little tired. Expect to be back at work within the next few weeks.
My friend Feithy has started podcasting about Paganism. She has selected some cracking songs. One band that blew me away was Gaia's Consort. Especially the song; Change The Way Things Are (MP3 - 4.26MB). Like Seize The Day, this band have made all their songs available for public consumption over the Net. Beautiful.
That will be me surviving then, waiting for the rain.
Blood pressure back to normal. INR at optimum. Pills are good...
Been watching Roads over and over. And Unchained Melody. Also Jefferson Airplane's Saturday Afternoon and Crosby, Stills and Nash; Suite: Judy Blues Eyes. Also listening to the songs of Seize The Day. Who needs television?
Broke the 15,000 barrier. Bracing myself for the end. Need to start again soon. Been thinking about The Lady of The Flowers a bit. Valentines day soon. Idiot. Whatever...
I've been walking every day for the last few days. Yesterday I walked to Richmond Lock, and again today. I took 331 photos. Only two are usable. This is one of them...
I'm feeling better. Gate thing progressing. Much to think about. Big fugues. Reality bombs.
I charged the mobile up earlier on, half expecting to find myself back in hospital by the morning. Bad dizzy spells. Probably low blood pressure. I'm knocking the Ramipril on the head from now. See the doctor on Wednesday. Heart sounds 'clear' to the consultant. He cautiously said I might make a full recovery from the damage caused by the virus - or whatever it was.
No man is a hero to his valet. And there are no atheists in foxholes.
The story is stalled temporarily. I have another 5-10,000 words to write, but at least another three weeks off work to get it done. I've re-read and revised the thing so many times now that...well, familiarity breads contempt. I can only see a flat surface at the moment. I really need to be high, or in some other form of fugue state, to appreciate it now. I need someone to tell me it's wonderful perhaps.
I've been watching a few DVDs recently. I've seen all of them before, bar one or two: Kenneth Clark's Civilisation (a little too narrow and pompous perhaps - but still 'charming'), If (revels in its time), Rogue Male (an interesting curioso), The Natural (for cheap thrills), Sherman's March (couldn't make it through), Sitting Ducks, Ed Wood, Amadeus (spoiled with the directors cut), The Final Cut of Bladerunner (mostly pointless and detrimental alterations) and The Elephant Man - mainly for the shining genius of Freddie Jones' performance as Bytes. The scene at the beginning of the film where he takes Frederick Treves into the filthy garret to view Merrick puts me into a trance. It's fine work by Freddie - everything; the blowing out of the match, the self-conscious and penetrating smile, the slow walk, the lowering of the lamp to warn Treves of the step down into the room, the movement of the eyes away from the gas light after he has raised the flame, the angle of the arms as he starts his spiel. He was at the top of the game.
I still feel that if I go to bed I might not wake up. So I conjure them - the women - in my mind, as a last stand, as it were. Tonight especially, I'll be thinking of biting the bullet. If only I can avoid dying in hospital. That would be something. And then? Another flicker towards the concrescence, I guess. Transformation into a memory, a tear, a pile of ashes. The web sites disappear after a while, a few people at Glastonbury wonder why I didn't show. My parents try to deal with my debts.
Enough. Of everything.
I took some photos a few days ago. The weather looks to be good on Tuesday. My new CF card should be here by then and if I'm still here I'll take some more. The pain makes me wonder.
I broke the 11,000 word mark today. Broke the 10,000 word mark Sunday morning. I'm not feeling so hot. All my fault no doubt. I need some help.
I'm
sitting at the back of The Old Anchor. In the garden. I've just found out that
my old friend Big Mac has died. He died on Boxing Day after taking his mask
off, removing the oxygen that was keeping him alive. He had stomach cancer and
it had spread to the lungs, and other places.
I had met him in The Clubhouse about 2 years ago. He used to annoy me by coming over to my table at about 6.30, every evening, and chatting to me. I principally wanted to be left alone - with my Russian Solitaire, Outlook and TextPad. After a while I learnt to switch the laptop off as soon as he walked in. I had begun to look forward to the conversations. He was a feminine conversationalist, which is to say that he segued seamlessly from subject to subject, keeping the undertone quite light and keeping you on your toes. He was opinionated, intelligent and experienced - he had done everything from run his own business to working as a waiter - and everything in between. In the sixties, from the age of 15, he had worked as a bouncer on Eel Pie Island and from there, it seemed, he had gotten involved in the music business - working festivals, driving musicians, delivering sound equipment. He ended up running his own business, which went bust, and got into IT after that. From Mac I got to know the crowd of people I drink with now.
He took his mask off. Removed the oxygen. Brave Boy.
Life goes on for the living, which is one of the enduring mysteries we face.
Mac was into photography, along with a lot of other things. These are for him because it's all I have to give. So long man. Join you soon enough.
This work is licensed under a Creative
Commons License.
