RANDOM ECHOES - 30/9/05
Giant Squid found and filmed - mythology is real.
Merissi had 16 names - none of them of his own devising. Many came from misread birth records or mispronunciations, but they all came in useful in later life when he was on the run and hiding out. But even though he became a champion of deceit he couldn't help leave traces of his true identity in his work. Teams of investigators were put on the case to fathom the clues to his whereabouts. It was a serious game. Time consuming and irritating for the officers concerned. Merissi continued and when he caught wind of what was occurring he laughed, enjoying the notoriety, flaunting his identity by waiting outside the investigators' offices at the end of the day, watching them leave for home or a bar. On one occassion he even bought one of them a drink. They never found him. But when an unidentified body washed up on the shores twenty five miles south of the city twelve years later without any papers or trace of address, they named it Merissi. But they never really knew.
A woman and a man in love are on a tube carriage to work. She says to him that he has yellow eyes. He doesn't understand. "The retina is yellowish, it means you are renal," she says. He is still unclear. "It means you are angry and jealous, and that quite possibly you are ill. Your kidneys may be in a bad way." Another woman, reading a paperback novel nearby, looks over the top of her book at the man to see if his lover is right. She says that it's true. At the next station the couple part. The man is concerned about his symptoms. He looks in the mirror inside the lift that takes him to his office. He is caught out by people getting in who stare at him. He explains that he is renal and they nod sagely back at him as if they already know. The receptionist at work says he looks angry about something and a little bit yellow, she asks if he has a cold. He says no and explains that he is renal. The receptionist nods of course. Everyone appears to know his symptoms and the diagnosis. He asks his boss for some time off so he can visit a drop-in surgery. His boss agrees mentioning the yellowness around his eyes. He quantifies with his boss if the discolouration is around his eyes or in his eyes. His boss says both. The man is doubly perturbed. On his way to the surgery he is mistaken for: a streetlight, a lemon ice-cream, and a traffic control beacon. People laugh at him or point him out, particularly children. By the time he makes it to the surgery foyer he is trembling with despair. The nurse behind the counter looks at him with wide eyed fascination. The man looks at her and says "I know, I know, I'm renal. Please you've got to help me!" He waits in line to see the doctor, weak with anxiety. After an hour he is admitted and the doctor looks at him and tuts and tells him that he is renal. The man screams back "I know. What can be done about it?" The doctor tells him that for starters he can calm down and then gives the man tablets and suggests he goes straight home. The man protests and the doctors fills out a sick note to put the man at ease and so he heads home. On his way he passes a group of art students sitting outside their college sketching, painting, smoking cigarettes and posing bohemian. They all look up at the man as he walks through them to get to the end of the street. One of them stops him and asks if he can paint his eyes as they are such a good shade of yellow. The man thinks the art student is taking the piss but when he sees that the others too are louchly mixing paints in readiness he grudgingly agrees. "After all," he reasons, "I don't actually feel unwell its just that everyone else has told me I am." So the man stays with the art students for the afternoon. They each paint him and when they are done he wonders homeward much happier. Indeed when he gets home his lover notices how much better he looks. The following morning on the tube the woman turns to the man and delicately she says "Your eyes are looking so much better," and she pauses for a moment then carries on, "but your lips are turning blue."
Friday, September 30, 2005
LOVE WALKOnce in the nonsense of Covent Garden Leonard longed to be back in the empty heart of the City. Back in Bouverie Street, or Lombard Lane where he almost trod on a homeless man sheltering in a doorway. Then stopped to fathom a plaque dated 1669 embedded in the façade of an office block.
Onto Fleet Street with its host of taxi cabs in the rain and lost Swedish tourist women with long legs the like of which he had not seen for twenty years, skin unfettered by veins and blotches.
He crossed over the Fleet and headed into the legal district toward Lincoln’s Inn. Another homeless man appeared, this one thin and wiry, walked over to him and began a story about seeing a chiropodist on Monday but until then could he see his way to helping him through the weekend? Leonard had no time for stories, he was on the move now and fearful of breaking his pace so he stuffed whatever came to hand into the dirty mitten without looking. It must have been a note for the man called after him: “I love you.”
Leonard laughed scornfully to himself. “Love, eh?”
He found he was stood in the lee of a legal stationery shop and wondered about divorce proceedings and if he dared at his age. Wasn’t it the territory of other people? People who believed they had more to gain or lose?
Next door stood a pub. It had a sign painted 1602 above the door and so was the oldest pub he’d ever seen. He stared through the window. It was warm within and crowded. A fat woman with a sagging cold face and extra bright lipstick smiled back at Leonard. Next to her a Spanish looking beauty with long dark hair leant up against the window talking to a young bald man in his late twenties who was giving off mating signals and failing. On the window ledge stood a row of stuffed animals on small wooden plinths and old adverts for wigmakers services. He wondered if the bald man had read them at all or if he had chosen to ignore them in his attempt to seduce the Spanish lady.
“Hotchpotch,” Leonard said out loud and turned into Lincoln’s Inn where more homeless people were gathered, some silent, others drunkenly shouting at each other.
Leonard headed out onto Kingsway and suddenly the ancient, enticing city was behind him. He felt let down by the geography and timing of the city. Though he realized its purpose was to impose rather than console.
Now bright shops were ahead of him there between the corporate obelisks and a hotel with a blank slab of concrete turned upright on one end numbered ‘90’ in bold chrome. It was like some weird bone to him waiting to crumble. It reminded him of his wife’s hip replacement: stark white and metallic placed inside her. He realized his heart felt similar.
The phrase ‘love walk’ came to him and in that gentle expression, mouthed for himself, he knew he loved his solitude more than anything or anyone.
He carried on walking, wanting to get lost, desiring semi-fantastical places and history. Not the Covent Garden falsehoods. The river would be his next location and who knew where thereafter?
Thursday, September 29, 2005
RANDOM ECHOES - 29/9/05
Most people can't walk straight, let alone talk straight - I say give Walter Wolfgang a loudhaler.
Chambers Wharf and Cold Store waiting to be converted into another glass and steel condominium (didn't all this start with Thatcher? It hasn't stopped. 20 years of yuppie appropriation of the river front, the traders oversee the trade route). Even outside the row of late night grocery shops, the launderette, the mock Italian restaurant in Bermondsey a 'genteel' piazza is being built, just off Jamaica Road. It consists of approx 20 chrome poles and lights that will illuminate the area at night and a number of steel benches ergonomically designed. This for relief of whom? For what? For the congregation of bigots I've seen abusing the Turkish guys that run the 24 hour shops? For the hoodies? Give it two years before they dig it up and concrete over it and leave it as it was.
Pale ghost beech tree Butler's Wharf before giant screen of storm and hurricane imagery.
Most people can't walk straight, let alone talk straight - I say give Walter Wolfgang a loudhaler.
Chambers Wharf and Cold Store waiting to be converted into another glass and steel condominium (didn't all this start with Thatcher? It hasn't stopped. 20 years of yuppie appropriation of the river front, the traders oversee the trade route). Even outside the row of late night grocery shops, the launderette, the mock Italian restaurant in Bermondsey a 'genteel' piazza is being built, just off Jamaica Road. It consists of approx 20 chrome poles and lights that will illuminate the area at night and a number of steel benches ergonomically designed. This for relief of whom? For what? For the congregation of bigots I've seen abusing the Turkish guys that run the 24 hour shops? For the hoodies? Give it two years before they dig it up and concrete over it and leave it as it was.
Pale ghost beech tree Butler's Wharf before giant screen of storm and hurricane imagery.
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Seven Parts for a Stone Cutter
Dawn is slow milk
A recipe if you will
For easy butter
Clouds of July horse flies
Over its waking surface
The Scar held yet
Wide palm soft purse
Heavy with possibility
* * *
I’ve been here since sun up, waiting bowed
So usurped by work
A thorny spine binds my arse to my head
I stretch and grunt to the wind
But pollen in my lungs hard to shift
Treats my voice to honeyed resin
I make a gummy yawn, hum
My singsong name and effort
Take my tool-bag to the lee
* * *
My hands are sure ridiculous
For they are twice as old as me
Pinky skin stretched thin across the backs
Ache with details they have mapped
Each brooding curve, each liminal track
Each constant silhouette of stone
* * *
I move to the hollow
Where the land subsided years ago
The Scars’ limpid scar
Up against the dark hawthorn line –
If you have walked it you’ll know where
Pick my start place
Begin to hem pasture
From next years’ fallow
Caution myself against haste
The dry wall’s growth
Divides the matter round it
Shard lain upon shard, tympanic
Songs from the basin
Toward completion
* * *
Shift my weight; erase the farmhouse
And swelter woodland from my sight
Beneath the ridge a hidden lamb
Bleats –
Wild clatter of slate, a sticky mouth
The prime goshawk circling
To the long beat of his heart since dawn
Descends, embeds talons in the gullet
A welter of potent blood
Splashes over granite
Beautiful, terrible marks spot
Through bitter gorse and heather
Throw up a juvenile groan
* * *
See myself as I once was
Running down the slopes
Suffocated by space
Hands empty, tools blunt
From within the hill I heard feet beat time
The loose value of soil made itself known
My peace broke
Collapsed, ridiculed
I fought the sound
Through the spring day, apprentice pilots
In their practice runs
Targeted the Scar
And I became a hillside comedy
I could not compete
I leapt from footholds of tradition
Tried to counter my substance
Fell heavy through granite
Flaunting my sorrow where no-one else could see
I wondered if I knew myself better than stone
Than each defined particle
Than this mineral certainty
But did not
What I believed hard beneath
Was soft, supple
Within the core the bleeding novice
Would have to choose different tools
To cut his new organ
* * *
The lamb holds out ‘til evening
Velvet ears aware the hollow drumming
Of its own evisceration
And the ring of steel head hammers
Beat out the so be it rhythm
In my grip
On this milky stone map
Horse flies collect
Around blackening eyes
And the goshawk I name Byron
After Kendal black drop
Rises belly full
Lands, preens north
On my slate wall
Watches; waits again
Cumbria, Spring 2004
Dawn is slow milk
A recipe if you will
For easy butter
Clouds of July horse flies
Over its waking surface
The Scar held yet
Wide palm soft purse
Heavy with possibility
* * *
I’ve been here since sun up, waiting bowed
So usurped by work
A thorny spine binds my arse to my head
I stretch and grunt to the wind
But pollen in my lungs hard to shift
Treats my voice to honeyed resin
I make a gummy yawn, hum
My singsong name and effort
Take my tool-bag to the lee
* * *
My hands are sure ridiculous
For they are twice as old as me
Pinky skin stretched thin across the backs
Ache with details they have mapped
Each brooding curve, each liminal track
Each constant silhouette of stone
* * *
I move to the hollow
Where the land subsided years ago
The Scars’ limpid scar
Up against the dark hawthorn line –
If you have walked it you’ll know where
Pick my start place
Begin to hem pasture
From next years’ fallow
Caution myself against haste
The dry wall’s growth
Divides the matter round it
Shard lain upon shard, tympanic
Songs from the basin
Toward completion
* * *
Shift my weight; erase the farmhouse
And swelter woodland from my sight
Beneath the ridge a hidden lamb
Bleats –
Wild clatter of slate, a sticky mouth
The prime goshawk circling
To the long beat of his heart since dawn
Descends, embeds talons in the gullet
A welter of potent blood
Splashes over granite
Beautiful, terrible marks spot
Through bitter gorse and heather
Throw up a juvenile groan
* * *
See myself as I once was
Running down the slopes
Suffocated by space
Hands empty, tools blunt
From within the hill I heard feet beat time
The loose value of soil made itself known
My peace broke
Collapsed, ridiculed
I fought the sound
Through the spring day, apprentice pilots
In their practice runs
Targeted the Scar
And I became a hillside comedy
I could not compete
I leapt from footholds of tradition
Tried to counter my substance
Fell heavy through granite
Flaunting my sorrow where no-one else could see
I wondered if I knew myself better than stone
Than each defined particle
Than this mineral certainty
But did not
What I believed hard beneath
Was soft, supple
Within the core the bleeding novice
Would have to choose different tools
To cut his new organ
* * *
The lamb holds out ‘til evening
Velvet ears aware the hollow drumming
Of its own evisceration
And the ring of steel head hammers
Beat out the so be it rhythm
In my grip
On this milky stone map
Horse flies collect
Around blackening eyes
And the goshawk I name Byron
After Kendal black drop
Rises belly full
Lands, preens north
On my slate wall
Watches; waits again
Cumbria, Spring 2004
RANDOM ECHOES - 27/9/05
Allen Ginsberg crying when he relates the moment he first heard Bob Dylan - the track: 'Hard Rain'. Ginsberg mentions how he felt the beat/protest/bohemian/self-expression 'baton' had been passed on to a new generation. His voice cracked, the full lips (half paralysed by a stroke) quivered and he started to cry.
Some memories brought to light in run up to moving from Brixton (not in chronological order):
- sparrowhawk and magpie fight over carrion in my back yard, a monumental battle full of shrieks, stand-offs, flurries - these two beasts would face up to each other, frozen in attitudes of defiance and then crash together - the magpie eventually had to retire from the sheer sleek power of its opponent but I still remember them both as goliaths;
- watching a middle aged woman carrying a wooden chair along Coldharbour Lane, shuffling and talking to herself, big baggy maroon cardigan, greying locks; it's not far off 2am on a Saturday morning. She places the chair in my porch, sits on it, takes out her little crack pipe and smokes a rock. She nods for a moment or two, mumbles something then picks her chair up and leaves talking louder than before, occassionally shouting;
- having my face beaten to a pulp for sport by eight teenagers one April evening as I was walking home, the kung-fu mock challenge of their leader, the tearing away of my glasses, the pummelling with knees and boots of my face, eyes ballooning and weeping, the thud as each hit impacted on my skull;
- my neighbours landing a helicopter on my ceiling every Saturday, shaking the core of my home, dissing my attempts to improve my environment and shield it from additional noise pollution;
- Dario Fo wins the Nobel Prize for Literature 9th October 1997, same day I moved in - had a newspaper cutting on my noticeboard ever since, faded and brown now but still the smiling face of that genius is there to this day;
- a lapis talisman given in memoriam that I find one morning broken into three pieces on the floor of my bathroom when a) I hadn't left it there, and b) it represented something that was meant to be unbroken - I suspect a third soul was at work;
- Brixton as a sound collage that never stops: the nights full of shouting, an assault of millenarian oaths and curses, of madness and insanity; at other times calypso being sung on a guitar outside my window at 3am; drug and alcohol addicts swearing at each other or at anything they perceive as a target for their misplaced anger and fear, even inanimate objects; bass boom cars shaking the windows and rattling doors; random screams; a blackbird singing through the summer nights; evangelists chanting and sermonising through PA systems on street corners. Heaven and hell;
- sleeping on my sofa for a year whilst putting myself back together (even thoguh I had a perfectly good bed to sleep in, I just couldn't bring myself to get in it).
An elevator in a large office complex, let's say a skyscraper, that develops a 'mind' of its own and deposits people at floors different to the one they have pressed the button for - penthouses inundated with unwanted visitors and guests; VIPs delivered to the basement to find themselves lost among heating pipes, maze-like alleys and conduits; exasperated execs breaking down and crying in the wrong foyer.
Another day (the tenth?) of waiting for replacement debit card - apparently one branch of my bank has lost the original replacement card somewhere in their internal mail when sending it to another branch. No one apologises to me. They are attempting to erode something.
Music machines (MP3s for example) result in much love.
Allen Ginsberg crying when he relates the moment he first heard Bob Dylan - the track: 'Hard Rain'. Ginsberg mentions how he felt the beat/protest/bohemian/self-expression 'baton' had been passed on to a new generation. His voice cracked, the full lips (half paralysed by a stroke) quivered and he started to cry.
Some memories brought to light in run up to moving from Brixton (not in chronological order):
- sparrowhawk and magpie fight over carrion in my back yard, a monumental battle full of shrieks, stand-offs, flurries - these two beasts would face up to each other, frozen in attitudes of defiance and then crash together - the magpie eventually had to retire from the sheer sleek power of its opponent but I still remember them both as goliaths;
- watching a middle aged woman carrying a wooden chair along Coldharbour Lane, shuffling and talking to herself, big baggy maroon cardigan, greying locks; it's not far off 2am on a Saturday morning. She places the chair in my porch, sits on it, takes out her little crack pipe and smokes a rock. She nods for a moment or two, mumbles something then picks her chair up and leaves talking louder than before, occassionally shouting;
- having my face beaten to a pulp for sport by eight teenagers one April evening as I was walking home, the kung-fu mock challenge of their leader, the tearing away of my glasses, the pummelling with knees and boots of my face, eyes ballooning and weeping, the thud as each hit impacted on my skull;
- my neighbours landing a helicopter on my ceiling every Saturday, shaking the core of my home, dissing my attempts to improve my environment and shield it from additional noise pollution;
- Dario Fo wins the Nobel Prize for Literature 9th October 1997, same day I moved in - had a newspaper cutting on my noticeboard ever since, faded and brown now but still the smiling face of that genius is there to this day;
- a lapis talisman given in memoriam that I find one morning broken into three pieces on the floor of my bathroom when a) I hadn't left it there, and b) it represented something that was meant to be unbroken - I suspect a third soul was at work;
- Brixton as a sound collage that never stops: the nights full of shouting, an assault of millenarian oaths and curses, of madness and insanity; at other times calypso being sung on a guitar outside my window at 3am; drug and alcohol addicts swearing at each other or at anything they perceive as a target for their misplaced anger and fear, even inanimate objects; bass boom cars shaking the windows and rattling doors; random screams; a blackbird singing through the summer nights; evangelists chanting and sermonising through PA systems on street corners. Heaven and hell;
- sleeping on my sofa for a year whilst putting myself back together (even thoguh I had a perfectly good bed to sleep in, I just couldn't bring myself to get in it).
An elevator in a large office complex, let's say a skyscraper, that develops a 'mind' of its own and deposits people at floors different to the one they have pressed the button for - penthouses inundated with unwanted visitors and guests; VIPs delivered to the basement to find themselves lost among heating pipes, maze-like alleys and conduits; exasperated execs breaking down and crying in the wrong foyer.
Another day (the tenth?) of waiting for replacement debit card - apparently one branch of my bank has lost the original replacement card somewhere in their internal mail when sending it to another branch. No one apologises to me. They are attempting to erode something.
Music machines (MP3s for example) result in much love.
Another Smaller (?) Event – Canon Hill Park 17/9/05
“Yes, we'll be there.”
He lays out the picnic for his friends, in the park near the bandstand: rug, food, wine, and music on a portable stereo (he’s compiled a special CD for the occasion).
He sits and he waits.
He nibbles, drinks a little of the wine, listens to the music.
Nobody comes.
He starts to clock watch.
He wonders if he has done something wrong, if his karma is screwed.
He debates friendship.
Rain falls.
He looks at the view south.
He gets up and walks away, leaving the picnic there soaking.
He continues walking.
Doesn’t stop walking.
Ever.
“Yes, we'll be there.”
He lays out the picnic for his friends, in the park near the bandstand: rug, food, wine, and music on a portable stereo (he’s compiled a special CD for the occasion).
He sits and he waits.
He nibbles, drinks a little of the wine, listens to the music.
Nobody comes.
He starts to clock watch.
He wonders if he has done something wrong, if his karma is screwed.
He debates friendship.
Rain falls.
He looks at the view south.
He gets up and walks away, leaving the picnic there soaking.
He continues walking.
Doesn’t stop walking.
Ever.
Monday, September 26, 2005
RANDOM ECHOES - 26/9/05
From a train Euston to Stoke on Trent 23/9/05 - the trackside racer trying to beat the train in his old Vauxhall, gunning it over the rough terrain, his headlights jumping in the twilight, suspension crunching
Basford, Newcastle-Under-Lyme - if you are ever in need of a haircut or styling, go there. The place is full of salons, they are everywhere - 4 in one short street alone: Salon Geoffrey (overly grand, with a fountain out front!), Finesse (run down two bit salon for the lower end of the market), Sallyanne's (ostentatious self-promoter), Decisions (dated '80s sci-fi look, perhaps run by an ex-Pans People dancer?). But don't go looking for a good bookshop in town, you won't find one. What does this mean for Saturday nights out on the town - what do they talk about? Follicles, scalps, conditioners, layering, highlights and lowlights? Is there a bigger picture in Basford?
6 hours on the road: Basford to Studley, Studley to London 25/9/05
- lost in early wake-up, eyes stinging, head like fudge, Pol saying goodbye to temporary home, feeling sad myself and I have only been there at weekends
- mock tudor pub near Cannock, painted saccharine yellow exterior, banners announcing 'Bob And Val Are Back!'
- Wombourne - the Martians have landed in the Black Country - 1960s flying saucer building at crossroads, looks like it will start spinning and shooting out death rays from multiple spiked canopy
- stopping off at The Rollright Stones, legend says you can never count the same number of stones twice - Pol tries it: first time round 69, second time round 66. Last time I visited this ancient site was in 1986, on the day US president Ronald Reagan gave the order to bomb Libya for supposed terrorist activity carried out in West Germany with the backing of Gadaffi. I was up there taking moody B/Ws with a 6x4.5 format camera; slow, gentle process: taking light readings, composing in the viewfinder that turned the world upside down (!). It was early morning. The F111s came first, swing wing, fast, the air frying in their wake. Then the B52 (?) bombers, high altitude, already trailing familiar vapour trails. They had taken off from Lakenheath and were presumably on their way to the Mediterranean in case the action there became a concentrated or prolonged assault. Following their passing, the weather turned dark and unsettled, as if the planes had pulled a bad front with them. And I remember it grew very cold.
Bermondsey, walking along the river at 7.15am - docklands, early morning light, security fences and forgotten wharves, fleeting glimpses through iron bars and barbed wire at the overgrown factory and storage buildings - a jay flits across a courtyard and into a plane tree, sits there watching me pass - my six bridge journey from Tower through to Blackfriars (I hunt in my memory for the name of the Italian banker found hanging under that bridge, his pockets weighed down, back in '82/83/84. First name that comes up is Aldo Moro but I know that's not right, he was Prime Minister, found dead in Rome and died for very different reasons. Roberto Calvi is the name I'm looking for - P2 masonic connection, Vatican banker, maybe embezzled mafia money?). Wonder what stories are attached to the other 5 bridges - Tower, London, Cannon Street Rail, Southwark, Millenium (apart from wobbling of course). In total from source to mouth 102 bridges cross the Thames. Small historical incongruities: ancient heraldic devices on or nearby chrome and concrete edifices - three blackbirds pursuivant, two flaming swords and a visored helmet, disembodied wings on Cardinals Wharf near the Provost's Cottage. In the SOS cafe opposite Smithfield the suited City career boys n' girls are already meeting over breakfast, it's as busy in there at 8am than it is on a Friday night, but there is something hellish about the fury and frenetic haggling going on: a mass of flailing arms, constant mobile phone calls, Armani suits, all surrounded by the meaty smell in the air from the market. Post-modern Bosch? More akin to George Grosz I think. Murder and mayhem.
Spider has moved yet again, and has grown once more. Maybe it is planning on being sole resident when I move out? The neighbours having to live with a giant spider downstairs. Still from what I can see, it recycles all its waste.
From a train Euston to Stoke on Trent 23/9/05 - the trackside racer trying to beat the train in his old Vauxhall, gunning it over the rough terrain, his headlights jumping in the twilight, suspension crunching
Basford, Newcastle-Under-Lyme - if you are ever in need of a haircut or styling, go there. The place is full of salons, they are everywhere - 4 in one short street alone: Salon Geoffrey (overly grand, with a fountain out front!), Finesse (run down two bit salon for the lower end of the market), Sallyanne's (ostentatious self-promoter), Decisions (dated '80s sci-fi look, perhaps run by an ex-Pans People dancer?). But don't go looking for a good bookshop in town, you won't find one. What does this mean for Saturday nights out on the town - what do they talk about? Follicles, scalps, conditioners, layering, highlights and lowlights? Is there a bigger picture in Basford?
6 hours on the road: Basford to Studley, Studley to London 25/9/05
- lost in early wake-up, eyes stinging, head like fudge, Pol saying goodbye to temporary home, feeling sad myself and I have only been there at weekends
- mock tudor pub near Cannock, painted saccharine yellow exterior, banners announcing 'Bob And Val Are Back!'
- Wombourne - the Martians have landed in the Black Country - 1960s flying saucer building at crossroads, looks like it will start spinning and shooting out death rays from multiple spiked canopy
- stopping off at The Rollright Stones, legend says you can never count the same number of stones twice - Pol tries it: first time round 69, second time round 66. Last time I visited this ancient site was in 1986, on the day US president Ronald Reagan gave the order to bomb Libya for supposed terrorist activity carried out in West Germany with the backing of Gadaffi. I was up there taking moody B/Ws with a 6x4.5 format camera; slow, gentle process: taking light readings, composing in the viewfinder that turned the world upside down (!). It was early morning. The F111s came first, swing wing, fast, the air frying in their wake. Then the B52 (?) bombers, high altitude, already trailing familiar vapour trails. They had taken off from Lakenheath and were presumably on their way to the Mediterranean in case the action there became a concentrated or prolonged assault. Following their passing, the weather turned dark and unsettled, as if the planes had pulled a bad front with them. And I remember it grew very cold.
Bermondsey, walking along the river at 7.15am - docklands, early morning light, security fences and forgotten wharves, fleeting glimpses through iron bars and barbed wire at the overgrown factory and storage buildings - a jay flits across a courtyard and into a plane tree, sits there watching me pass - my six bridge journey from Tower through to Blackfriars (I hunt in my memory for the name of the Italian banker found hanging under that bridge, his pockets weighed down, back in '82/83/84. First name that comes up is Aldo Moro but I know that's not right, he was Prime Minister, found dead in Rome and died for very different reasons. Roberto Calvi is the name I'm looking for - P2 masonic connection, Vatican banker, maybe embezzled mafia money?). Wonder what stories are attached to the other 5 bridges - Tower, London, Cannon Street Rail, Southwark, Millenium (apart from wobbling of course). In total from source to mouth 102 bridges cross the Thames. Small historical incongruities: ancient heraldic devices on or nearby chrome and concrete edifices - three blackbirds pursuivant, two flaming swords and a visored helmet, disembodied wings on Cardinals Wharf near the Provost's Cottage. In the SOS cafe opposite Smithfield the suited City career boys n' girls are already meeting over breakfast, it's as busy in there at 8am than it is on a Friday night, but there is something hellish about the fury and frenetic haggling going on: a mass of flailing arms, constant mobile phone calls, Armani suits, all surrounded by the meaty smell in the air from the market. Post-modern Bosch? More akin to George Grosz I think. Murder and mayhem.
Spider has moved yet again, and has grown once more. Maybe it is planning on being sole resident when I move out? The neighbours having to live with a giant spider downstairs. Still from what I can see, it recycles all its waste.
Friday, September 23, 2005
FABLE (?) - draft 1 - 23/9/05
A woman stands on a beach in a sleeveless dress facing a large white stone block similar to a slab of marble. Six children play at her feet, three boys, three girls.
The woman is in awe at the beauty of the stone. She thinks how alien it is and yet how familiar. She believes there are other selves within it connected to her dreams, her instincts, and to things she has seen:
a green dog in a fighting pen having bets placed on it, a horse and a cow together on a road encircled by armoured vehicles and soldiers who think they might be suicide bombers, a blue jewel thrown east to west, a line of starlings escaping flames across the horizon, her husband’s arm across her shoulders. Two men carried his body aloft – they placed it on a tier of wood before they cremated him.
The stone gives her hope. She believes it comes from a source beyond the land she lives in, from beyond the earth itself.
The children stop playing and watch their mother.
She asks the stone a question: how long will the war last?
The children ask her what she is doing and she tells them gently to be quiet.
The stone does not answer straight away but she knows it will eventually, so she sits on the sand and waits.
The eldest, her daughter, takes the rest of the children home to eat.
When the sun sets she returns to the beach, taking some food for her mother. They eat together in silence. When they are finished, the daughter sees something in her mother’s gaze and, understanding it, departs with tears in her eyes. She tells the other children not to think of their Mother any more, that she has become their Mother from that day on.
Nine years pass. The children grow; become young adults. The eldest daughter works as a teacher. The next daughter marries a journalist. The youngest daughter is still at school, and they say she will be an artist, a sculptor, when she leaves. The eldest boy and the middle boy join the militia and die in a street battle. The youngest boy loses the power of speech. Each day the eldest daughter takes a bowl of food to her mother and tells her about her children and the war. Each day she asks if the stone has answered the question and each day the Mother replies with the same simple gaze.
Unbeknownst to the people, at the beginning of the tenth year the western generals call upon their president to end the war. There are no men left to fight; they have emptied all the hills, filled all the caves with rubble, and rewritten all the books.
One evening, the woman is visited by the ghost of her husband. He walks along the beach toward her, waving. He is still as he was when he died, still handsome. He touches her hair and the woman cries. They talk about their old life together, their happiness and their adventures before the war began; of their studies and their travels before they were married; of their beloved children.
“I wanted to give them an answer,” the woman says. “To give them hope. I’ve waited every day for it but it hasn’t come. Does it mean the war will never end?”
“It is coming,” replied her husband. “Soon, it is coming; from where you least expect it. That is all I can say.”
The man kisses his wife gently on the lips and returns from where he came. The woman sleeps as she has always slept, there at the foot of the obelisk, kept warm by it. But when she wakes the following day she feels different, full of the desire to talk. She is restless and excited and when she spies the familiar form of her eldest daughter arriving with her bowl of food she cannot help calling to her.
Her daughter is surprised and runs, spilling the precious food. She asks if the answer has come, if the wait is over.
“I don’t know. But I do know it is time to leave and be with you again.”
“Look Mother, look at the stone!”
Behind the woman the stone grows dim, turning grey, shedding its crystalline brightness.
The Mother and daughter watch afraid.
All around them they hear the howl of war sweeping past – bombs falling; citizens wailing and crying; metal, glass, and brick smashing; the reports of gunfire, and the crackling of radios and orders being relayed. The stone absorbs it all.
The Mother and daughter hold on to each other suffering the noise there together until it stops.
“Was that the answer?” the daughter asks.
“I’m not sure. Perhaps.”
“Maybe we can ask it.”
“Yes, yes.” The Mother rises to her feet resting her weight on her daughter’s shoulder and, just as she did so many years before, she stands in front of the stone and repeats the question. But still the answer does not come; at least not directly from the obelisk.
The daughter touches her Mother’s arm. “Look,” she says and points along the beach where the three remaining offspring hurry towards them.
The Mother chastises her daughter, “You told them where I was!”
“No. I promise you. Never.”
When the family arrives they greet their Mother with shy recognition and tears.
“All these years we thought you were dead,” says the youngest daughter. She indicates the only son the mute, “He was walking to work when he saw his sister with the bowl of food. The guards had let him through the cordon by mistake. Normally he never comes this way. He ran home to tell us and we followed.”
The eldest daughter asks, “How did all of you get through?”
The three youngest look at each other and smile.
The Mother steps forward, “It’s over isn’t it?”
The second daughter replies: “No, Mama. They’ve just found somewhere else to go now.”
“And who won?”
“Nobody won and they say nobody lost, Mama.”
“But that’s not right. We lost three. Oh, my children look at you. Such serious eyes. The stone was meant to bring you an answer. I wanted to give you hope that it would all be alright, like any mother would.”
“But we have you back Mama. That is enough now.”
The youngest daughter walks over to the stone and touches it, her palm open against the surface. She lets out a slight gasp. She turns to look at the rest of her family. It is the same look the Mother had given ten years before when she knew she had to stay.
“No!” says the Mother screaming at the stone. “You can’t have her. Not now. You lied to me. Promised me things you could not give, why should I let you have my daughter.”
But the young daughter smiles and says, “Mama it’s okay. Bring me my tools.”
A woman stands on a beach in a sleeveless dress facing a large white stone block similar to a slab of marble. Six children play at her feet, three boys, three girls.
The woman is in awe at the beauty of the stone. She thinks how alien it is and yet how familiar. She believes there are other selves within it connected to her dreams, her instincts, and to things she has seen:
a green dog in a fighting pen having bets placed on it, a horse and a cow together on a road encircled by armoured vehicles and soldiers who think they might be suicide bombers, a blue jewel thrown east to west, a line of starlings escaping flames across the horizon, her husband’s arm across her shoulders. Two men carried his body aloft – they placed it on a tier of wood before they cremated him.
The stone gives her hope. She believes it comes from a source beyond the land she lives in, from beyond the earth itself.
The children stop playing and watch their mother.
She asks the stone a question: how long will the war last?
The children ask her what she is doing and she tells them gently to be quiet.
The stone does not answer straight away but she knows it will eventually, so she sits on the sand and waits.
The eldest, her daughter, takes the rest of the children home to eat.
When the sun sets she returns to the beach, taking some food for her mother. They eat together in silence. When they are finished, the daughter sees something in her mother’s gaze and, understanding it, departs with tears in her eyes. She tells the other children not to think of their Mother any more, that she has become their Mother from that day on.
Nine years pass. The children grow; become young adults. The eldest daughter works as a teacher. The next daughter marries a journalist. The youngest daughter is still at school, and they say she will be an artist, a sculptor, when she leaves. The eldest boy and the middle boy join the militia and die in a street battle. The youngest boy loses the power of speech. Each day the eldest daughter takes a bowl of food to her mother and tells her about her children and the war. Each day she asks if the stone has answered the question and each day the Mother replies with the same simple gaze.
Unbeknownst to the people, at the beginning of the tenth year the western generals call upon their president to end the war. There are no men left to fight; they have emptied all the hills, filled all the caves with rubble, and rewritten all the books.
One evening, the woman is visited by the ghost of her husband. He walks along the beach toward her, waving. He is still as he was when he died, still handsome. He touches her hair and the woman cries. They talk about their old life together, their happiness and their adventures before the war began; of their studies and their travels before they were married; of their beloved children.
“I wanted to give them an answer,” the woman says. “To give them hope. I’ve waited every day for it but it hasn’t come. Does it mean the war will never end?”
“It is coming,” replied her husband. “Soon, it is coming; from where you least expect it. That is all I can say.”
The man kisses his wife gently on the lips and returns from where he came. The woman sleeps as she has always slept, there at the foot of the obelisk, kept warm by it. But when she wakes the following day she feels different, full of the desire to talk. She is restless and excited and when she spies the familiar form of her eldest daughter arriving with her bowl of food she cannot help calling to her.
Her daughter is surprised and runs, spilling the precious food. She asks if the answer has come, if the wait is over.
“I don’t know. But I do know it is time to leave and be with you again.”
“Look Mother, look at the stone!”
Behind the woman the stone grows dim, turning grey, shedding its crystalline brightness.
The Mother and daughter watch afraid.
All around them they hear the howl of war sweeping past – bombs falling; citizens wailing and crying; metal, glass, and brick smashing; the reports of gunfire, and the crackling of radios and orders being relayed. The stone absorbs it all.
The Mother and daughter hold on to each other suffering the noise there together until it stops.
“Was that the answer?” the daughter asks.
“I’m not sure. Perhaps.”
“Maybe we can ask it.”
“Yes, yes.” The Mother rises to her feet resting her weight on her daughter’s shoulder and, just as she did so many years before, she stands in front of the stone and repeats the question. But still the answer does not come; at least not directly from the obelisk.
The daughter touches her Mother’s arm. “Look,” she says and points along the beach where the three remaining offspring hurry towards them.
The Mother chastises her daughter, “You told them where I was!”
“No. I promise you. Never.”
When the family arrives they greet their Mother with shy recognition and tears.
“All these years we thought you were dead,” says the youngest daughter. She indicates the only son the mute, “He was walking to work when he saw his sister with the bowl of food. The guards had let him through the cordon by mistake. Normally he never comes this way. He ran home to tell us and we followed.”
The eldest daughter asks, “How did all of you get through?”
The three youngest look at each other and smile.
The Mother steps forward, “It’s over isn’t it?”
The second daughter replies: “No, Mama. They’ve just found somewhere else to go now.”
“And who won?”
“Nobody won and they say nobody lost, Mama.”
“But that’s not right. We lost three. Oh, my children look at you. Such serious eyes. The stone was meant to bring you an answer. I wanted to give you hope that it would all be alright, like any mother would.”
“But we have you back Mama. That is enough now.”
The youngest daughter walks over to the stone and touches it, her palm open against the surface. She lets out a slight gasp. She turns to look at the rest of her family. It is the same look the Mother had given ten years before when she knew she had to stay.
“No!” says the Mother screaming at the stone. “You can’t have her. Not now. You lied to me. Promised me things you could not give, why should I let you have my daughter.”
But the young daughter smiles and says, “Mama it’s okay. Bring me my tools.”
RANDOM ECHOES - 23/9/05
History edit:
infamous Dylan performance from 1966 Manchester Free Trade Hall as item on the radio this morning - the 'Judas' moment of course - but the programmers edit out Dylan's 'Play fucking loud' that he calls to the band a split second before they break into 'Like A Rolling Stone'. Wierd to hear it censored in this way, it's an integral part of that version of the song, an extra lyric almost. As if to make up for this edit Dylan's 1966 face - wild wire hair, shades - is plastered on the front of magazines on a booth in Farringdon station.
Look up the work of photographer Raymond Moore some time. You might like him.
From a train: the identical interior shells of 3 new condominiums, all pale blue, each with fixtures and fittings in exactly the same place. Seen at speed from the train it feels as if we are on a static loop, some flaw in time and motion. I quite enjoyed it at the time, though I wouldn't want to live there.
History edit:
infamous Dylan performance from 1966 Manchester Free Trade Hall as item on the radio this morning - the 'Judas' moment of course - but the programmers edit out Dylan's 'Play fucking loud' that he calls to the band a split second before they break into 'Like A Rolling Stone'. Wierd to hear it censored in this way, it's an integral part of that version of the song, an extra lyric almost. As if to make up for this edit Dylan's 1966 face - wild wire hair, shades - is plastered on the front of magazines on a booth in Farringdon station.
Look up the work of photographer Raymond Moore some time. You might like him.
From a train: the identical interior shells of 3 new condominiums, all pale blue, each with fixtures and fittings in exactly the same place. Seen at speed from the train it feels as if we are on a static loop, some flaw in time and motion. I quite enjoyed it at the time, though I wouldn't want to live there.
Thursday, September 22, 2005
Harbour Tale
I watch the route of her message in a bottle
At first take its course downriver then get
Tossed upon the weir and for a moment I think
It might break not make it beyond the harbour wall
And it would be a temptation to read it wet but
It reaches that ebbing tide by design
And begins its passage out to sea
I walk home along the promenade and
Looking for clues to her missive find a book offered
At either end of our story – ‘A Book of Answers’
Still warm from her last reading - which
Once was filled with profundity and relevance
But now I see only ever had one answer:
‘Be Patient’ worded one hundred different ways
Aci Trezza, Sicily
I watch the route of her message in a bottle
At first take its course downriver then get
Tossed upon the weir and for a moment I think
It might break not make it beyond the harbour wall
And it would be a temptation to read it wet but
It reaches that ebbing tide by design
And begins its passage out to sea
I walk home along the promenade and
Looking for clues to her missive find a book offered
At either end of our story – ‘A Book of Answers’
Still warm from her last reading - which
Once was filled with profundity and relevance
But now I see only ever had one answer:
‘Be Patient’ worded one hundred different ways
Aci Trezza, Sicily
RANDOM ECHOES - 22/9/05
Last night: a TV programme on the reasons America lost the Vietnam war despite their overwhelming technological superiority. Primarily because the Vietcong used the land itself to assist them (e.g. the Ho Chi Minh Trail was a web of roads, tracks, and arterial connections using the geography of the land, it constantly changed as required and was never a single, direct route). On the radio this morning an MOD bod talks about Iraq 'exit strategy' - that corporate expression. Is there a difference between 'exit strategy' and 'retreat' (he never used that word, but I suspect that is what it means)? Is the US (and thereby UK, being the 51st state) now mired in minutae and semantics as a way of plastering over the hell wound of Iraq and trying to camouflage this Vietnam repeat? Did the US not learn anything about indiginous responses to invasion 30 years ago? As a final thought I wonder if G.W.B. is afraid of water (water and oil don't mix, remember)? Is that why it took him so long to visit New Orleans?
A variety of things spotted on a five minute walk in SW9:
- a perambulator with the lid removed containing: a small brown teddy bear tied to one end (seemingly under duress), 12 plastic bags folded neatly in the bottom, and one green leather briefcase;
- 'Flow Fume' - a graffiti tag repeated on rail trackside wall;
- S Car Monitor 'Watching For Your Safety'.
Conservation success: 300 pairs of Stone Curlews (Burhinus oedicnemus) now breeding in England.
Further items disposed of in run up to moving:
- a 20 year old airbrush - I sprayed my first model aeroplane with it when I was 15
- 2 sets of photographic development tongs - alchemical tools
- a small brass pepper mill from Morocco - one unground peppercorn within
- a black and white photo from Machu Picchu - three stone columns at the entranceway to a temple
(Concern: this is beginning to sound like a section from The Generation Game - apologies! Read the list back and you'll see what I mean. Frightening.)
The spider has moved again. It is now closer to its original position in front of the kitchen window. I study it up close. With the daylight coming from behind it, portions of its legs and mandibles are virtually transparent, like pearl. Beautiful and deadly. I believe the markings are to confuse potential enemies and prey (though the web it has spun is already enough) - they might think they see it, but then it becomes partly invisible, difficult to spot, hard to ascertain its next move. Then it strikes! Clever. By extension, I realise this item relates to today's first item.
8 different mobile phone ring tones in one office all going off consecutively. Random evidence of sunspot activity?
Keeping your eyes and ears open is a full time job.
Last night: a TV programme on the reasons America lost the Vietnam war despite their overwhelming technological superiority. Primarily because the Vietcong used the land itself to assist them (e.g. the Ho Chi Minh Trail was a web of roads, tracks, and arterial connections using the geography of the land, it constantly changed as required and was never a single, direct route). On the radio this morning an MOD bod talks about Iraq 'exit strategy' - that corporate expression. Is there a difference between 'exit strategy' and 'retreat' (he never used that word, but I suspect that is what it means)? Is the US (and thereby UK, being the 51st state) now mired in minutae and semantics as a way of plastering over the hell wound of Iraq and trying to camouflage this Vietnam repeat? Did the US not learn anything about indiginous responses to invasion 30 years ago? As a final thought I wonder if G.W.B. is afraid of water (water and oil don't mix, remember)? Is that why it took him so long to visit New Orleans?
A variety of things spotted on a five minute walk in SW9:
- a perambulator with the lid removed containing: a small brown teddy bear tied to one end (seemingly under duress), 12 plastic bags folded neatly in the bottom, and one green leather briefcase;
- 'Flow Fume' - a graffiti tag repeated on rail trackside wall;
- S Car Monitor 'Watching For Your Safety'.
Conservation success: 300 pairs of Stone Curlews (Burhinus oedicnemus) now breeding in England.
Further items disposed of in run up to moving:
- a 20 year old airbrush - I sprayed my first model aeroplane with it when I was 15
- 2 sets of photographic development tongs - alchemical tools
- a small brass pepper mill from Morocco - one unground peppercorn within
- a black and white photo from Machu Picchu - three stone columns at the entranceway to a temple
(Concern: this is beginning to sound like a section from The Generation Game - apologies! Read the list back and you'll see what I mean. Frightening.)
The spider has moved again. It is now closer to its original position in front of the kitchen window. I study it up close. With the daylight coming from behind it, portions of its legs and mandibles are virtually transparent, like pearl. Beautiful and deadly. I believe the markings are to confuse potential enemies and prey (though the web it has spun is already enough) - they might think they see it, but then it becomes partly invisible, difficult to spot, hard to ascertain its next move. Then it strikes! Clever. By extension, I realise this item relates to today's first item.
8 different mobile phone ring tones in one office all going off consecutively. Random evidence of sunspot activity?
Keeping your eyes and ears open is a full time job.
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
RANDOM ECHOES - 21/9/05
My brother claims that a blog is the height of presumption. Why would anyone want to read this shit? I don't know, you tell me.
The spider in the kitchen has moved. It destroyed the previous web it built across one corner of the window, and moved higher up, closer to the ceiling. This destruction and movement correspond with its rapid increase in size and a change in waiting posture. Previously it appeared quite benign, legs curled into its body, a dumpling. Now it is predatory, two forelegs out like lances and it has changed colour - striped like a tiger or wasp. I enjoy its company.
A garbled message left on my answerphone overnight. Never heard the phone ring. Wander what time it was left. Hope no one needed something.
More items thrown out last evening in the run up to moving house:
- a wah wah pedal with a small etched image of Jimi Hendrix on it's base
- two pairs of old prescription spectacles - both wire framed, very studious
- a charger (probably for a mobile phone but not sure)
- some gifts, cards and postcards from an ex lover - am surprised at how gushing she was
- a necklace: quartz crystal on a leather thong that was given to me by a hippy in Devon
- two chisels (definitely not mine, have no idea whose they were)
- a computer game called Messiah (is this related somehow to the previous item?)
- a false moustache and the glue used to apply it
A deep space probe sends back data. Apparently the big bang may never have happened.
Booking a rail ticket this morning. First I 'talk' to a voice-activated data service that asks me various questions about my journey: destination, time of travel, concessions etc. I am impressed. I believe the technology is helping to speed the booking along. At the end of the quizzing the pre-recorded female voice (sounding a bit like my friend Emma, who, amongst other things, is a voice-over artist so it could feasibly be her) tells me she has all the details they need to process my booking and will now put me through to an operator to take debit card details etc. I am still fairly impressed. When I am put through the operator says hello, tells me her name and then repeats the details I have just left. The destination is incorrect so I repeat the journey. She repeats the journey back to me. I concur. She asks me the time of travel, I repeat it, she repeats it, we concur.She repeats all the questions I have just recorded with her robot counterpart. We concur. She takes my card details at the end of which she repeats the destination, journey time, lack of concession - the entire booking - back to me. I concur. But I'm not so impressed now. Before we part company I ask her what the voice-activated robot was for? She replies: "To save time. Thank you for travelling XXXXXX Trains. Enjoy your journey."
My brother claims that a blog is the height of presumption. Why would anyone want to read this shit? I don't know, you tell me.
The spider in the kitchen has moved. It destroyed the previous web it built across one corner of the window, and moved higher up, closer to the ceiling. This destruction and movement correspond with its rapid increase in size and a change in waiting posture. Previously it appeared quite benign, legs curled into its body, a dumpling. Now it is predatory, two forelegs out like lances and it has changed colour - striped like a tiger or wasp. I enjoy its company.
A garbled message left on my answerphone overnight. Never heard the phone ring. Wander what time it was left. Hope no one needed something.
More items thrown out last evening in the run up to moving house:
- a wah wah pedal with a small etched image of Jimi Hendrix on it's base
- two pairs of old prescription spectacles - both wire framed, very studious
- a charger (probably for a mobile phone but not sure)
- some gifts, cards and postcards from an ex lover - am surprised at how gushing she was
- a necklace: quartz crystal on a leather thong that was given to me by a hippy in Devon
- two chisels (definitely not mine, have no idea whose they were)
- a computer game called Messiah (is this related somehow to the previous item?)
- a false moustache and the glue used to apply it
A deep space probe sends back data. Apparently the big bang may never have happened.
Booking a rail ticket this morning. First I 'talk' to a voice-activated data service that asks me various questions about my journey: destination, time of travel, concessions etc. I am impressed. I believe the technology is helping to speed the booking along. At the end of the quizzing the pre-recorded female voice (sounding a bit like my friend Emma, who, amongst other things, is a voice-over artist so it could feasibly be her) tells me she has all the details they need to process my booking and will now put me through to an operator to take debit card details etc. I am still fairly impressed. When I am put through the operator says hello, tells me her name and then repeats the details I have just left. The destination is incorrect so I repeat the journey. She repeats the journey back to me. I concur. She asks me the time of travel, I repeat it, she repeats it, we concur.She repeats all the questions I have just recorded with her robot counterpart. We concur. She takes my card details at the end of which she repeats the destination, journey time, lack of concession - the entire booking - back to me. I concur. But I'm not so impressed now. Before we part company I ask her what the voice-activated robot was for? She replies: "To save time. Thank you for travelling XXXXXX Trains. Enjoy your journey."
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
Some Events in Canon Hill Park, Birmingham – 16/9/05
Canada geese harassing heads in low flight approach, their reasons will become clear – a young woman misreads the signs and gets overly bossy, treating treasure like an every day object, assuming too much she is ignorant of what she may lose – ‘Friend of the Park’ in stay press white trousers mobilizes teams of walkers with their bent ash canes and folding seats, they walk in single file – Three teenage boys, 18-19 years, slouch at the pond edge. They share a spliff among the feathers, a kind of eider dust, on the water surface at the slag end – Oddly paired couples wander off earphone to earphone, one of them knows what lies ahead while the other has no clue of the purpose of their roaming – Sweet peas, salvia, Indian Bean Trees – A woman with thick dark hair stands ramrod stiff, cold in the shade while an anorak loner sits in the sun happy for all to ignore him in his musing – Greek women in high-heeled shoes chain-smoke strong cigarettes while children reel past on scooters and bikes – One of the teen anglers sings: “Now I’m starting to fish I’m gonna have me some luck.” – There is an attempt at flamenco going on in a skirt worn by a middle-aged madam, she knows some fundamental questions would be good right now, she wants to spend some time with a stranger but wonders how safe that would be? She asks herself: how big is my heart? Big enough to embrace a park? A pond? An ornamental garden? A tree? A shrub? Another person? Perhaps. A Labrador squats and shits on the path in front of her, cold stone arse. So she leaves her position and takes up on the other side of the pond, the lee end, where strangers often meet (she’s seen them do it): men in dark pin-striped suits meet women wearing pullovers and track-suit trousers. They shake hands as if making a deal – The teen anglers move, more to cause trouble than improve their chances of making a catch. They eat bacon rolls. They are getting cold, bored, frustrated and look for scapegoats. They shout at old men and dogs. Eventually they up and quit, nothing caught. They pick on each other as they go, rods now less precious and used as whips and clubs to knock each other about with, they head off along the pond edge.
The hubbub of Urdu bubbling in the mouths of two elderly gentlemen: brook speak, river words, waterfall sentences.
Roman emperors once walked here I’m told, or did I imagine it? Sure. Sweet imagination sat here while the roamers roam collecting their woodland parts, their overtures in the garden – “Can we feed the ducks down there please Daddy?” – surely Caesar never asked that, then again perhaps he did, perhaps he invaded solely to feed the ducks – a grouchy child squats down in the center of a busy path, refusing to move. He plays with a pebble and the tip of his boots, skating blue, waving hands, woad and wailing, the vestige of land-based resistance, Boadicea’s inheritor. He doesn’t know it of course, just does it all the same, acts trenchant boy over and over, little piggy lord of the flies.
A fish jumps – the teen anglers missed the beast, perhaps the only one in the pond, and now he knows he can reveal himself, flop through the surface without being afraid, mocking the idiocy of impatience.
Mobile orators on push scooters and mountain bikes ride the slopes screaming and bellowing the names of single syllable gods and goddesses, slow open mouthed grunts vowel full, hard edged even from the mouths of women and children.
“You’ve got to find a man first.” Two women discuss childbirth and seem to repeat the obvious, broken by the bell on a child’s tricycle. “I was 37 when I had him.”
Then the day is broken. A dog with a head like Anubis moves close, cocks its leg and urinates full flow against a litter bin, his amber bead eyes strike horror in the people nearby as if with it’s gaze it is capable of stealing some essential part of them within, a part they cannot define and made more horrific by that, the unidentified, the unclear – but swans and geese arrive - Icelandic, mythical - landing on the pond surface to play out their role as mediators of peace (I said their reason would be clear) – come to quell the dog-like satanic beast – the pond bubbles with the battle, the dog growling, salivating, baring harsh canines, drawing blood from the slender necks of the swans or tearing the broad wings of geese – but he is one alone against them, crowding him, sending him down under the surface, not dead but defeated in his legion for now: the dis-animated mask, the steaming turd sinking to the pond floor – a dirty legend, not some romantic sugary fairy tale, but a grimmer reality: pagan, debauched, bloody, sacrificial - feuds of animal gods suffering even here – the gatekeeper keeps the public back, away from the danger, blowing his whistle, rapidly cordoning off areas of the park - on the opposite bank, the Molineux wolves gather for any carrion that may float their way. They can’t swim so haunt the water’s edge hungrily, snuffling at the bloody surface, eager to gorge on the dead bird fodder of good vs. evil – they bay and howl with hunger.
The air remains edgy, tense. There’s a stand-off between a squirrel and toddler - each eyeing the other with suspicion – unhappy families play emotional hide and seek on the walkway to the coffee shop, pushing and pulling against each other, then oddly inertial, wondering where they are going and why? A Serb or Croatian family gathers nearby. One of them, male 28, has a false arm, the immobile hand of which rests on his thigh, open palmed. Cannot tell where it is attached but he does not bend his elbow so presumably right up to the shoulder, torn off in the Balkans war. It is a shocking sight here. This man, half-mannequin. There is something odd about the plastic his prosthetic is made of, like that part of him is from the 1960s.
Canada geese harassing heads in low flight approach, their reasons will become clear – a young woman misreads the signs and gets overly bossy, treating treasure like an every day object, assuming too much she is ignorant of what she may lose – ‘Friend of the Park’ in stay press white trousers mobilizes teams of walkers with their bent ash canes and folding seats, they walk in single file – Three teenage boys, 18-19 years, slouch at the pond edge. They share a spliff among the feathers, a kind of eider dust, on the water surface at the slag end – Oddly paired couples wander off earphone to earphone, one of them knows what lies ahead while the other has no clue of the purpose of their roaming – Sweet peas, salvia, Indian Bean Trees – A woman with thick dark hair stands ramrod stiff, cold in the shade while an anorak loner sits in the sun happy for all to ignore him in his musing – Greek women in high-heeled shoes chain-smoke strong cigarettes while children reel past on scooters and bikes – One of the teen anglers sings: “Now I’m starting to fish I’m gonna have me some luck.” – There is an attempt at flamenco going on in a skirt worn by a middle-aged madam, she knows some fundamental questions would be good right now, she wants to spend some time with a stranger but wonders how safe that would be? She asks herself: how big is my heart? Big enough to embrace a park? A pond? An ornamental garden? A tree? A shrub? Another person? Perhaps. A Labrador squats and shits on the path in front of her, cold stone arse. So she leaves her position and takes up on the other side of the pond, the lee end, where strangers often meet (she’s seen them do it): men in dark pin-striped suits meet women wearing pullovers and track-suit trousers. They shake hands as if making a deal – The teen anglers move, more to cause trouble than improve their chances of making a catch. They eat bacon rolls. They are getting cold, bored, frustrated and look for scapegoats. They shout at old men and dogs. Eventually they up and quit, nothing caught. They pick on each other as they go, rods now less precious and used as whips and clubs to knock each other about with, they head off along the pond edge.
The hubbub of Urdu bubbling in the mouths of two elderly gentlemen: brook speak, river words, waterfall sentences.
Roman emperors once walked here I’m told, or did I imagine it? Sure. Sweet imagination sat here while the roamers roam collecting their woodland parts, their overtures in the garden – “Can we feed the ducks down there please Daddy?” – surely Caesar never asked that, then again perhaps he did, perhaps he invaded solely to feed the ducks – a grouchy child squats down in the center of a busy path, refusing to move. He plays with a pebble and the tip of his boots, skating blue, waving hands, woad and wailing, the vestige of land-based resistance, Boadicea’s inheritor. He doesn’t know it of course, just does it all the same, acts trenchant boy over and over, little piggy lord of the flies.
A fish jumps – the teen anglers missed the beast, perhaps the only one in the pond, and now he knows he can reveal himself, flop through the surface without being afraid, mocking the idiocy of impatience.
Mobile orators on push scooters and mountain bikes ride the slopes screaming and bellowing the names of single syllable gods and goddesses, slow open mouthed grunts vowel full, hard edged even from the mouths of women and children.
“You’ve got to find a man first.” Two women discuss childbirth and seem to repeat the obvious, broken by the bell on a child’s tricycle. “I was 37 when I had him.”
Then the day is broken. A dog with a head like Anubis moves close, cocks its leg and urinates full flow against a litter bin, his amber bead eyes strike horror in the people nearby as if with it’s gaze it is capable of stealing some essential part of them within, a part they cannot define and made more horrific by that, the unidentified, the unclear – but swans and geese arrive - Icelandic, mythical - landing on the pond surface to play out their role as mediators of peace (I said their reason would be clear) – come to quell the dog-like satanic beast – the pond bubbles with the battle, the dog growling, salivating, baring harsh canines, drawing blood from the slender necks of the swans or tearing the broad wings of geese – but he is one alone against them, crowding him, sending him down under the surface, not dead but defeated in his legion for now: the dis-animated mask, the steaming turd sinking to the pond floor – a dirty legend, not some romantic sugary fairy tale, but a grimmer reality: pagan, debauched, bloody, sacrificial - feuds of animal gods suffering even here – the gatekeeper keeps the public back, away from the danger, blowing his whistle, rapidly cordoning off areas of the park - on the opposite bank, the Molineux wolves gather for any carrion that may float their way. They can’t swim so haunt the water’s edge hungrily, snuffling at the bloody surface, eager to gorge on the dead bird fodder of good vs. evil – they bay and howl with hunger.
The air remains edgy, tense. There’s a stand-off between a squirrel and toddler - each eyeing the other with suspicion – unhappy families play emotional hide and seek on the walkway to the coffee shop, pushing and pulling against each other, then oddly inertial, wondering where they are going and why? A Serb or Croatian family gathers nearby. One of them, male 28, has a false arm, the immobile hand of which rests on his thigh, open palmed. Cannot tell where it is attached but he does not bend his elbow so presumably right up to the shoulder, torn off in the Balkans war. It is a shocking sight here. This man, half-mannequin. There is something odd about the plastic his prosthetic is made of, like that part of him is from the 1960s.
Geisha Possibilities
I sit on her balcony
Its warm
A few feet away she’s naked
But for purple satin robe
Under my breath I thank her
For the company
She brews coffee, breaks lychee shells
Doesn't hear me – that’s okay
The sun rises to her wet fingers
Whilst I fondle my belt buckle
I want to turn and say
I am sorry
I think I am playing games
Something like that
But I can’t move
I'm distracted
In the yard below Maud begins to sing
Her old face a structure so defined
It is brighter than the sun
When I do summon the courage
To throw my part away
I see it is already done
The woman I meant to thank has gone
Perhaps to the bathroom
Back to the bedroom
Or else to that sun
Maida Vale, London
I sit on her balcony
Its warm
A few feet away she’s naked
But for purple satin robe
Under my breath I thank her
For the company
She brews coffee, breaks lychee shells
Doesn't hear me – that’s okay
The sun rises to her wet fingers
Whilst I fondle my belt buckle
I want to turn and say
I am sorry
I think I am playing games
Something like that
But I can’t move
I'm distracted
In the yard below Maud begins to sing
Her old face a structure so defined
It is brighter than the sun
When I do summon the courage
To throw my part away
I see it is already done
The woman I meant to thank has gone
Perhaps to the bathroom
Back to the bedroom
Or else to that sun
Maida Vale, London
5 Related Shorts
He could not see green. Being colour-blind it turned into a shade of brown. So no matter how hard he stared at his wife’s dress it still looked puce and he couldn’t get excited about it. She stood there in the doorway of the changing room waiting for a compliment, something like: “You look great in that particular shade of lime green (with the paler details), it really shows off your skin tone.” But to him it had the appearance of a drab hessian sack. He was scared. Their relationship was currently on a knife-edge, and he had never told her about his optical defect. He feared that the confusion in his eyes might be read the wrong way and lead to yet another emotional standoff. He wanted to tell her it wasn’t his fault; it was a damn genetic flaw, but she had such high hopes for the baby they were going to try for he didn’t have the guts. He wondered if the only option left was suicide.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Milky water lapped Julio’s feet as he ambled along the purple beach – above him twelve moons hung in order of their orbit to the planet (Oztra closest, and Dabm The Diminutive furthest away). The trees lining the beach to his right were in the midst of their autumnal singing; he noted how similar to Carmena Burana the melody was. The clams on the rocks were opening and closing in time, giving the impression the notes were coming from their dark innards, which they weren’t. Julio touched his cheek to check he was still out cold. He was afraid he wasn’t. But he felt nothing so, thank Christ, he was. He hoped above hope that he would never wake up.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Having thrown himself out of the window, Ryan saw for the first time the swallow’s nest under the eves of the eight-storey apartment building. He had an urge to touch it. But of course it rapidly got further away from him, and in those last fleeting milliseconds before he hit the pavement he watched the mother swallow high tail into the mouth of the muddy orb and disappear. At that moment he regretted his fatal decision and wished he too had wings with which he could reverse his fall and stop himself from
- - - - - - - - - - - -
The arrow came from nowhere. Evidently an expert archer had launched it from a longbow and from some distance away, for it struck with such force it almost entirely disappeared into the ground. He stooped and pulled it out of the earth. Tied to its shaft was a message on red paper sealed with wax. He took the paper from the shaft then pushed the arrow back into the hole it had made when it struck – he stroked the blue flights, they were stiff and crackled under his thumb. He unfurled the note as he stood back up. It read: DUCK!
- - - - - - - - - - - -
“Don’t fly too close to the sun, son. You know how Icarus died don’t you?”
“I know pops,” the boy replied. “I promise I won’t – I might touch those clouds though. Is that okay?” He pointed toward the billowing formations tinted in the setting sun.
“Yes, that’s okay – but no talking to the cloud keepers if they are up there today. They are evil little imps and they’ll clip your feathers for a joke and watch you fall to your death.”
“You’re trying to scare me, pop.”
“No. Honestly. They are up there waiting for an adventurous soul like you to dare fly high enough with your handmade eagle wings.”
Of course the boy set off on his flight and with purpose flew straight into the clouds.
He could not see green. Being colour-blind it turned into a shade of brown. So no matter how hard he stared at his wife’s dress it still looked puce and he couldn’t get excited about it. She stood there in the doorway of the changing room waiting for a compliment, something like: “You look great in that particular shade of lime green (with the paler details), it really shows off your skin tone.” But to him it had the appearance of a drab hessian sack. He was scared. Their relationship was currently on a knife-edge, and he had never told her about his optical defect. He feared that the confusion in his eyes might be read the wrong way and lead to yet another emotional standoff. He wanted to tell her it wasn’t his fault; it was a damn genetic flaw, but she had such high hopes for the baby they were going to try for he didn’t have the guts. He wondered if the only option left was suicide.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Milky water lapped Julio’s feet as he ambled along the purple beach – above him twelve moons hung in order of their orbit to the planet (Oztra closest, and Dabm The Diminutive furthest away). The trees lining the beach to his right were in the midst of their autumnal singing; he noted how similar to Carmena Burana the melody was. The clams on the rocks were opening and closing in time, giving the impression the notes were coming from their dark innards, which they weren’t. Julio touched his cheek to check he was still out cold. He was afraid he wasn’t. But he felt nothing so, thank Christ, he was. He hoped above hope that he would never wake up.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Having thrown himself out of the window, Ryan saw for the first time the swallow’s nest under the eves of the eight-storey apartment building. He had an urge to touch it. But of course it rapidly got further away from him, and in those last fleeting milliseconds before he hit the pavement he watched the mother swallow high tail into the mouth of the muddy orb and disappear. At that moment he regretted his fatal decision and wished he too had wings with which he could reverse his fall and stop himself from
- - - - - - - - - - - -
The arrow came from nowhere. Evidently an expert archer had launched it from a longbow and from some distance away, for it struck with such force it almost entirely disappeared into the ground. He stooped and pulled it out of the earth. Tied to its shaft was a message on red paper sealed with wax. He took the paper from the shaft then pushed the arrow back into the hole it had made when it struck – he stroked the blue flights, they were stiff and crackled under his thumb. He unfurled the note as he stood back up. It read: DUCK!
- - - - - - - - - - - -
“Don’t fly too close to the sun, son. You know how Icarus died don’t you?”
“I know pops,” the boy replied. “I promise I won’t – I might touch those clouds though. Is that okay?” He pointed toward the billowing formations tinted in the setting sun.
“Yes, that’s okay – but no talking to the cloud keepers if they are up there today. They are evil little imps and they’ll clip your feathers for a joke and watch you fall to your death.”
“You’re trying to scare me, pop.”
“No. Honestly. They are up there waiting for an adventurous soul like you to dare fly high enough with your handmade eagle wings.”
Of course the boy set off on his flight and with purpose flew straight into the clouds.
RANDOM ECHOES - 20/9/05
Said ‘goodbye’ to Petunia Jack. His time had come.
A stack of audio tapes (close on 100 Maxells, TDKs etc) thrown out this morning. Some were close on 20 years old. Travel companions. Historic documents. Formulators of personality. Am I being rash?
On bicycle for the journey into work. A quote by H.G. Wells: 'When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race.'
An old fashioned safe discarded on the street. The security lock removed, the paint peeling. If I open the door what might be inside? I plump for the idea that a staircase resides within, making its way into a subterranean world, small groups of neighbours and societies hiding out. Waiting.
Said ‘goodbye’ to Petunia Jack. His time had come.
A stack of audio tapes (close on 100 Maxells, TDKs etc) thrown out this morning. Some were close on 20 years old. Travel companions. Historic documents. Formulators of personality. Am I being rash?
On bicycle for the journey into work. A quote by H.G. Wells: 'When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race.'
An old fashioned safe discarded on the street. The security lock removed, the paint peeling. If I open the door what might be inside? I plump for the idea that a staircase resides within, making its way into a subterranean world, small groups of neighbours and societies hiding out. Waiting. Which reminds me: at 7am my neighbours in the flat above sound like they are dragging heavy weights across the kitchen floor, wheezing as they do so.
Basra: a flaming Warrior armoured car with warriors falling out aflame.
Aristophanes offered this myth: that we were once all double creatures each with two heads, four arms, two torsos, four legs etc. and that the gods split us in two for our early impertinence. Since then we have been literally looking for our ‘other halves’.
5th day of waiting for a replacement debit card.
Killer Zombie
Sitting in a café drinking coffee (what else?)
The sulphuric lemon water with it
Reminds me I am far away from home -
And when the workmen come asleep on their feet
Carrying trays of pears and blood oranges
I suspect that all men are really homesick
I push the coffee beyond the borders of the table
The waitress says, “You should drink a rum/tequila Killer Zombie
Take the edge off the day.”
She’s right
I ask her name
‘Minerva’ she says
‘I’ve heard that name before,’ I say
‘It’s a myth,’ she smiles
And at the same time comes
A venomous call from the kitchen
A man in shades and sweating
His flesh rotten
Stands in the doorway ordering
Minerva back to work
London, September 2005
Sitting in a café drinking coffee (what else?)
The sulphuric lemon water with it
Reminds me I am far away from home -
And when the workmen come asleep on their feet
Carrying trays of pears and blood oranges
I suspect that all men are really homesick
I push the coffee beyond the borders of the table
The waitress says, “You should drink a rum/tequila Killer Zombie
Take the edge off the day.”
She’s right
I ask her name
‘Minerva’ she says
‘I’ve heard that name before,’ I say
‘It’s a myth,’ she smiles
And at the same time comes
A venomous call from the kitchen
A man in shades and sweating
His flesh rotten
Stands in the doorway ordering
Minerva back to work
London, September 2005
Monday, September 19, 2005
Forgotten Zone
Bloxwich and Walsall (18/9/05) - I make no judgement on the people, but on the environment. The result of careless town planners with limited imaginations (inheritors of prison design? - e.g. the pantechnicon of the 19thC.) willing (nay desiring?) the populus 'live' in the shadow of giant Matalan warehouses and man-made waste tumuli. Where local restaurants refuse to open at street level so rent the top floor of office blocks, where toy rabbits can be seen impaled on railings along an entire street, and gardens are turned into landfill sites.
Bloxwich and Walsall (18/9/05) - I make no judgement on the people, but on the environment. The result of careless town planners with limited imaginations (inheritors of prison design? - e.g. the pantechnicon of the 19thC.) willing (nay desiring?) the populus 'live' in the shadow of giant Matalan warehouses and man-made waste tumuli. Where local restaurants refuse to open at street level so rent the top floor of office blocks, where toy rabbits can be seen impaled on railings along an entire street, and gardens are turned into landfill sites.
RANDOM ECHOES - 19/9/05
Taxi and mini-cab drivers never apologise for being so slow you miss your train.
Fortune is a woman blowing a kiss goodbye from a moving train. She will see you again.
Vision Of London as found on my desk 11.25am: a small unwashed apple, a toothpick, some vivid green material (possibly waterproof), a ringpull, a seed, a piece of gold foil, a tiny plastic tube - I do not know who left them there, and I have no recollection of doing so myself.
You too can be an adventure partner, just don't look to define it too much.
An artist is always concerned with quality.
Taxi and mini-cab drivers never apologise for being so slow you miss your train.
Fortune is a woman blowing a kiss goodbye from a moving train. She will see you again.
Vision Of London as found on my desk 11.25am: a small unwashed apple, a toothpick, some vivid green material (possibly waterproof), a ringpull, a seed, a piece of gold foil, a tiny plastic tube - I do not know who left them there, and I have no recollection of doing so myself.
You too can be an adventure partner, just don't look to define it too much.
An artist is always concerned with quality.
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