a lot of the time i stay up late alone. i walk the streets without leaving my room and peer in the houses of strangers without looking. in one i see a couple arguing. they scream at each other – cursing, hissing, pushing. finally the man lifts a heavy vase and smashes in the woman’s skull with one quick swipe. he then collapses beside her corpse, weeping, incapable of touching her, waiting inconsolable for whomever will arrive to punish him, but no one comes. i move on. in another i see an old woman sitting alone at a table draped in a perfect linen cloth. she knitted it herself. it has taken her twenty years. upon the table are cakes, tarts, biscuits and buns, glasses of squash and lemonade – sticky sugary treats for no one. she sits there alone, staring at what should be a happy banquet, not even an expression left with her for company. this is how she spends every night. i move on. in another house i see a family of friends gathered on chairs and sofas around a television. they stare into its screen, uncomprehending of its petty images or each other, absorbed in their own heavy expressions – too set to register even the lightest of thoughts, not one of them lifting so much as a finger to alter the inevitable procession of images they stare disinterestedly into. there was someone else there once – the suggestion of a consciousness or conscience that still somehow lingers and endures in the silence, but is long gone all the same from here now. only memories live here, given life by the light of a TV screen. ghosts made flesh. I move on. I stop at one last house. Within it I see a child, hunched over upon his bed, reading without looking at the words, speaking without making a sound even to himself. he thinks of how small the world is, how flat – of how many people he has known and loved who have since fallen from its edge and disappeared from his universe altogether, faster and faster, spilling like sand from a shattered hourglass. he doesn’t cry for his mother. he no longer waits to go out and play with his best friend. i do not move on. i stay with this boy, this child, so far from being a man. i want to see what will happen. i just want to see what happens to him next. it’s not as if i care. it’s not as if i care one way or another. it’s just curiosity, that’s all. it’s all just something to do.
Archive for the ‘automatics’ Category
A life told by early morning song lyrics
Wednesday 9th July, 2008Doomsday. He’s not on the beach – but who cares anymore. The engines roar and I find myself alone, not even myself, the maple-leafed sign beside me revealing this is Dårlig Ulv Stranden. I got it all wrong. London and the hollow chimes of an unirradiated Big Ben already feel light years away, gongs for a future already written and long since lived. There’s no sunshine anywhere. Chasing Cars. If I just lay here. Close eyes, arms out – back to the Reichenbach mattress as I push with my heel – down, down, down into cold and roaring hell, silent and unnoticed like a stone. I push my neck out so my head hits first. Nothing, just silence. I open my eyes and see only magnolia ceiling – put my hand to my head to find a still intact skull, but my fingers come away bloody all the same. I’m the only one who can see it. I’m the only one. I’m alone.
This is it, by childhood and home
Tuesday 20th May, 2008fingers tense against the gnarled oak chest, clutching at drawers, scrambling, fumbling inside. i am blind, my vision having died in darkened rooms, blindfolded by dirty sheets and smothered by anything without an edge. paper cuts my skin as i claw within the dark for clues, for something soft and warm, familiar, breaking my knuckles against the splintered wood as i search. there. something there. as fingertips tickle the tip of its outline a light fires from somewhere unseen – a spark far away that flashes an image, a distant star to find myself by. i dig deeper, clutching onto nothing and everything, anything with both hands, sweaty palms grasping only empty air and dust. is that all there is to find here? i lay them flat and take a breath of dark and unwashed air. another burst of light, and i see the image once more – older, no wiser – a face that forgot to stop. its curiosity peers at me from a place beyond. i stare back at it, forcing my hands from the empty familiar chest. slowly i move forward as it dims, my footsteps marked by brief memories of quickly fading flashes.
I heard a cow cough
Wednesday 23rd April, 2008a st andrews breakfast – two cups of coffee and two marlboro lights, looking at 9am as it trails warm pools in its cloak across the valley opposite. brecon has never looked so pretty as regina sings, and sings and sings, daffs dancing all around me like teenagers at a concert waving unsteady lighter flames. i am in hiding, on holiday from life as we know it – making shows of trading blows, just hoping no one knows. wave to postman – a ludicrous parochial pleasantville truman show wave. i’ve died and gone to cliché. this is the antithesis to mr bergamot strange and mister beasley toast jr. this is the place where time comes before its next posting. no rainbows in the sky – no rain – so let’s have another cup of coffee, and let’s have another marlboro light. duty free, don’t you know. i see my life in a grey non-polyester hoodie – all grainy in sepia like a sunday morning duvet, snuggling caricatures of everything once ridiculous, trading absurdities for the trite. even johnny rockefeller is looking for a silver lining.
The first time you discovered microphone feedback
Monday 17th March, 2008read. just read. sit back with your feet up on white sheets and listen to owen. don’t fear the reaper. read, as you turn the pages of a tobacco-yellowed 1960s paperback just to feel them between your fingers. pretend you’re rich. pretend this is all just a novel and you’re holding your breath because you’re three pages before the end – you know there’s a huge golden sunset peering between tiny holes in the net curtains as you read. you wait for that first breath as you turn that last page. there! that moment. that’s it. that moment where you don’t…
make breakfast. take your time. watch granules swirl and pool within a dark oily universe, primed in that perfect soup to catch the tiniest moment of light. take your time stirring the lightstruck shadows as they splash against white china bones. grill the bacon. keep it simple. just take your time. you’re not putting anything away. you’re spending money – spending money on silly little things just because they make you giggle for a moment or wiggle for a minute. Don’t worry about it. Don’t worry about money. money’s more ephemeral than flesh. you can’t keep money, and money by itself brings nothing. but money buys…
you don’t know when the plumber’s coming, if the plumber’s coming. it doesn’t matter. this is the point. you don’t know what’s going to happen apart from the simple things. the simple things that money can buy. that you can control. the only things you can control are the simple things. they’re pieces of an orchestra, you are components of a counterpoint. you are in harmony. you’re even typing in harmony with the music you’re listening to, the music you just bought. you fit. you fit because you don’t know what’s going on. music of the waves, the spheres – nothing is grinding, merely turning, resonating, spinning slowly on and on and on and on.
Anniversary
Tuesday 4th March, 2008Stupid things I remember about that love affair:
We met at a friend’s house. A huge house. I can’t remember the first thing who said to who, only that he was tired and wanted to go to bed, too polite to say so when I stopped him outside his room to talk to him. I had to talk to him.
I remember, just when I thought he was only being polite, him giving me the sandwich he’d made for his long journey home. I couldn’t bring myself to eat it. I just stared at it. I wanted to keep it in a box forever to remind myself that the moment was real. He said it was ‘Manitoba and cheese’. I looked up to see a huge grin on his face. We laughed. We said goodnight and hugged briefly, politely. I was certain I’d never see him again. Minutes later we kissed for the first time.
There was a knock on my door as I lay in bed. “Come in,” I said, hoping, hoping, hoping. It was him. He was babbling nervously and I just kissed him. He kept on babbling – still talking whilst my lips pressed against his. After that we lay in bed all night talking. Then he told me he had a boyfriend. I pretended to be shocked, but I think even at the time I knew. I just didn’t want to acknowledge it. It wasn’t fair.
I remember the last time I saw him, the night we kissed properly for the first and last time. He gave me a card with his details on it because he had to go away. I took it without reading it, and suddenly he was kissing me – we sank to the floor in a crowded room kissing like hungry teenagers. We stopped. Breath. Warmth, Staring at each other with an involuntary warm glow and grinning like simpletons. Then he made some comment I took completely the wrong way. The glow left me. I slapped him like Scarlet O’Hara, and ran away through the crowds of people, unable to stop crying. He ran after me, somehow reassuring, apologising and making me laugh and cry all at the same time as he chased me down the stairs. He held my face in his hands and made me look at him. He said, deeply, that he was sorry – that he didn’t mean what he said in the way I took it. That what he meant but couldn’t say was that it was the most perfect kiss he’d ever shared with someone. Then he did that thing he did – singing “you’re still the one I lust for” to Shania Twain’s ‘You’re Still The One’. Beautiful fool. We laughed holding each other on the busy stairwell – reassurance, uncertainty and restraint surging through us.
I remember waking up, instantly knowing where I was and trying to get back to sleep to read what it said on his card, knowing all the same that it was pointless. I buried my head under the pillow, breathing in the lingering warmth of the dream, chasing at its misty heels as it faded back to that impossible place where dreams exist. All I could see in my mind was the slow swaying of a silver pocketwatch – back, forth, back, forth.
I remember looking at the back of my right hand as Spring’s sun peeped through the curtains, used to the inexplicable routine now, over and over like a lesson not being learnt. Nothing – no eczema, no bleeding, broken dry skin. Then I remembered last night – the back of my left hand before I had gone to bed – red, inflamed, dry. Whilst I was awake. I don’t understand any of it – the significance, the coincidence – waking up with a physical pain and yet feeling a warmth and confidence for the rest of the day, despite none of it being something you can touch or keep. Despite none of it being real. I tell myself it isn’t real, that these things aren’t important. This is probably why I keep having these dreams that are more real than anything I’ve known.
Those white silent people
Monday 15th October, 2007This is the book where the precious things go. This is where I put love to grow mouldy, where I put lies told to loved ones to be forgotten about – to fade with time, blanched to inedible like asparagus left in dark cupboards for the rest of lives. This is where I put my dreams and fears, stapling their excitement and power to bored pages like hunting trophies, waiting for their blood to seep out and soak until they become just words on a page. This is where I put myself, where I tried to paint the childhood portrait that would age instead of me. This is where I lost myself, in a half finished game of hide-and-seek. This will be the only place left where anyone who looked could find me. Sometimes I hear their footsteps. Sometimes I hear their breath as they pause, hand reached out, taut with intent, pink with pulsing blood. But I, being only words upon a page, cannot call them in, cannot call for help. Cannot call. I listen instead to their footsteps as they turn and walk away, each sounding so like one another’s but peppered with the hint of something new. The scent lingers stronger than any portrait, long after they have gone. You can smell newness like an aphrodisiac in here, because this is the place where the trophies are stored – the lost pennies, the shed ungreyed hairs, the priceless precious dust. This is what happens to the things we call precious.
Aether
Monday 17th September, 2007Sit in space and stare into terror. Is this it? Is this as good as it gets? Blank lifeless faces stare back at me from the order that surrounds, wordless mouths pulled into self-conscious smiles. What is it they’re saying that I am not? What is it I’m saying that they are not? I used to have a brain. Now I just have grey sludge leached out by sweetness into grey dishwater, grey bathwater. Grey, grey, grey and they see it as colours. Come splash around in my grey colour, I’m just like you. You’re nothing like me. No, I’m nothing like you, so I’ll cut you – let’s take another colour, bright red this time. It’s another grey day and the cold is creeping under the door, through the window, clutching my knuckles that clutch my knees and grasping my elbows in its firm icy clasp. Winter is coming, and what have you saved? Air. So clutch your precious nothing and sit tight. Sit in space and stare into terror. Into terror. Into terror. This is it. This is all it is. There is nothing else. Nothing. But still I don’t give up. I really should give up. It never stops, any of it. Things change and stay the same in equal disappointment. What choice do you have but to live through it. Survive, again.
The Industrial Revolution
Thursday 6th September, 2007Voices mutter empty promises from the world beyond – the one that keeps turning beyond the window with everyone doing their little bit to keep pushing with palms and feet on wheels, keys and mice. The world is spun from promises. The music of the spheres recites dates, statistics and payments. The cog turns another notch. Black coffeemud and chained cigarettes oil the machine, otherwise grinding and whining at full steam as soon as I’m awake – earlier than I intended, like Wellington saying ‘hallo’ to a red fizzing dawn. London burns with low calorie chatter while the Luddites hide in daytime TV caves like chaos magicians playing with nylon and Oyster cards just enough to make it all work for them, nothing more. I am not a mouse in a wheel. I am not a God turning the lever. I am a man in a world that spins, regardless of my promises, regardless of whether I push it or not – my own music on loop bidding “get it done, get it done”. The world spins, on and on, regardless. Everything is spinning around me, shrieking with the sounds of promises and torture alike. The inferno sounds like a message. “Get it done,” it screams. “Get it done.”
Anything to anyone
Tuesday 4th September, 2007I came back in the room, food in hand and I see a black cat. Black cat, watching the bed. Watching where I sleep. I blink. The cat becomes a chair, but I still see it as a cat, for a moment in my mind. An imprint, then it’s gone. Bast. Bast. Like Wadjet, like someone else, but this is not Tybi. Tybi! – just now, like Toby, my black cat’s name who died 9 years ago. But this is not Tybi. This is Pachon. This is not the 17th. This is the third. This is the third of the 9th. This is a pattern. This is a pattern where there isn’t a pattern there. There is just me here. Me, the chair and these unwritten things.
Paper bag
Tuesday 5th June, 2007Breathe. Pace. Pace. Breathe. Tea. Make some tea. Green tea. Brewing. Big Brother on in background. People. People. Humans. Breathe. Breathe. Calm. Centred. Breath. The universe. The universe. Centred. Gravity. Attracts. Planets. Planets are selfish. The Earth is not the centre of the universe. Planets think they are suns. Suns think they are galaxies. The universe. Breathe. God does not think he is anything. God looks neither down on or up to anything. God is not human. God is not a planet. God is just God. God is breath. Breathe. Breathe.
Fuck breathing.
I’m going out to buy cigarettes. It’s two days and I’m allowed.
And green tea just reminds me of Vancouver and the road to it, untravelled.
with garlic
Sunday 6th May, 2007i didnt go to sleep when i should. i stayed up to watch the fabulous baker boys – it was quite good. i liked tthe ending. never trust a happy ending,. it’s not real, not part of life. you’re just wathcing someone else’s sully dream. abandoned. ugh. broken. there is no purpose to this. i’m just giving my fingrs something to do while their arms just lie here in the dark, staling banquets to be bitten by my mystery assassin in the night. alone. i shjudder to think what all this is doing to my grammatical reputation. write though me . write fast. there is pasta on the hob, old tobacco down the drain, and i sit here curdling thoughts to a thick that when the milk’s drunk quick go insane
Scraps
Tuesday 24th April, 2007Someone downstairs is drilling into the wall. I lie back on the mattress and try not to imagine it’s my head being bored into, the shrill scream of metal on plaster resonating through bone and wood alike. This is a Tuesday. Who am I today? I have a become Tuesday. Remember, not all calls will be successful but every call will be charged. Uncertainty flares again upon my belly and I tear off another few layers of skin without a second thought. Suddenly, with the call of an unseen bird commander from the other side of the window, the drill ceases, and the burning stops. The world inside the prison falls entirely silent, and even the leaves beyond the glass cease their slow bobbing dance out of respect for everything that remains trapped within – clawed at, bored at, but never breaking the thinnest of barriers.
