31/7/06

THE CONVENTION

They’ve come from all over the world. From Biloxi, Bruges, Barrow. It might be considered The Wicker Man in reverse. Thousands of Christians come to witness and evangelise and invade. And the lines of teenagers queuing at night for their fix of moral supply. What sickens me is that it seems all so American, all so bible belt – the presentation , the howling ministers, the late night pseudo-concert of Christian rock and the baying for the blood of ‘unbelievers’. Even faith has been appropriated by the US in presentation and style.

An actress tells me that she was sunbathing in her front garden, nothing too louche but she was - yes - in a bikini and she ain’t unattractive if you know what I mean – reading a book, midriff catching the rays and a young man (maybe twelve, thirteen) walking with his parents is told to keep his eyes down Billy keep your eyes down and he does like an obedient dog. I wonder if he wanted to look, to feed those young intrigued hormones? Or was it auto for him to see woman’s flesh as sin?

I would consider stripping naked, covering myself in woad symbols of some pagan origin and run through them shouting: I TOO HAVE BEEN TOUCHED BY THE HAND OF GOD. But somehow I don’t think they’d get the joke.

25/7/06

Too many pained expressions; too many crying faces; too many pleading mothers.

Why does humanity love this agony; almost revel in it?

And they talk of how they will prevail. Churning out the vision of 'freedom' - for whom? The word is meaningless. The dictionary has been rewritten by the neo-cons and the fundamentalists; our language is debased.

They come and they stay. They appropriate and they consume. They are immoveable and believe always that they are right.

Exxon or maybe BP or maybe one of the others, named an oil tanker after Condaleeza Rice. It's true - look it up. Lloyds of London will have her listed. And as it sails out into the arms of 'peace' the hooded mothers will still be waiting in the dark beneath what little shelter they can muster. Staring at the dark wall; praying that they will survive another night.

In the 1980's Ronald Reagan (Raygun to some) traded weapons with Hizbollah in return for hostages and then denied it to the American people. Actually denied it on camera to the American people - he said, to quote, 'my heart tells me we didn't do it, but the facts tell me otherwise' as if it had happened by proxy or else in some dream-vision pre-cursor of his later brain disease, a personal tragedy sure - but after how many others?

Can't we find somewhere in the world - maybe an abyssal plain beneath the sea somewhere - where we can dump all these fundamentalist cowards from both sides of the 'war on terror' - which is turning out to be a war on civilians - and leave them there? Just to please us all however, let Bush go first, closely followed by Cheney, Rumsfeld, James Baker III, and Paul Wolfowitz. Blair will follow anyway and willingly; we won't even need to give him a push. After that send down the now redundant and mythological bin Laden to sing goodnight lullabies to them all. And leave them there while the rest of us try to reconstruct some respect in the human race.

Start by listening to what those mothers want and need most.

- - - - - -

A vision of charging hordes across the fells - Beowulf resurrected? - some Dark Age clash of warriors; noise, the sound of wheeling hawks - the time coming with howls, pre-battle, lusty, berserked - then their blades clash and the hills are filled with the skirmishing, echoing across the lake -

Smoke n' Fire

23/7/06 - Keswick

Concerning

The tightening of the belt; the searching, albeit uneasily, for less - shedding needs, wants and desires -

I keep thinking there is nothing to write about up here - that it is an uninspiring place - but maybe I've been living with my eyes closed -

Let's begin with this observation: this town ain't big enough for all of us - so many people descending on it; the roads are gridlocked with traffic, the streets are crammed with meandering tourists, and Convention evangelists; the air is tainted with car fumes and heat - and this is the country! This is what we have come to think of it - what is the impact of all these people suddenly descending - invading - on this environment?
Under siege - aspects of Robert Stone's Dog Soldiers?

22/7/06

The lights across the lake at night, inviting things, mysterious, far-fetched almost. I wonder why it is that I know I will miss them but not other things here?

Maybe there is something wrong with me; increasingly I find myself drawn to being alone. The only other person I can spend time with is Pol; but even then I still find myself on occasion quiet, enjoying those moments together when the least is necessary - perhaps this is blissful?

Perhaps it is age? Or the environment? Or my surroundings?

I find it easier to relinquish social contact here. To be drawn into stillness and solitude - gaining far more pleasure and sustenance from writing and books than any offer of meeting in a bar or café.

I find myself crying when I turn on the news - the destruction of Lebanon appears to be a crime; the pointless waste of civilian life in the name of the empty war on terror, the new universal excuse for sanctioned harm. I am angry with the state of Israel for becoming a goliath, and for being another US pawn. I am angry too with the radicals who propel the friction. But in all the media, in all the press the blame is laid exclusively at the feet of Hizbollah as being the instigators of this conflict with their kidnapping of Israeli soldiers - but hold on. There was an inexcusable incident on a pleasure beach only weeks ago whereby a Palestinian family where shelled to death by Israeli artillery. Surely this is not an isolated incident in the picture?

It weighs heavily and in the meantime all other aspects of life here seem petty -

17/7/06

Hardest days these; when everything I write appears to be nonsense and life reflects that - a running theme? - the day begins ludicrously early with the usual false start and sleep deprivation - mind bellowing at me and nagging anxieties on full tilt - but still I rise full of purpose, fresh ideas and face the computer; gaze at the words written, re-read and suddenly it all appears to be pap, pointless, useless characters that have nowhere to go yet need to get somewhere, anywhere besides the limbo I'm leaving them in - maybe I am not reaching inside myself enough, maybe I lack courage? - but when this one thing of import betrays me it seems to drag whole foundations with it - all this, they say, is common enough for a creative person, but when you're a nobody this kind of despondency only reinforces the nobody and one's hopes of becoming somebody evaporate leaving you reeling in agony - the only recourse is to believe, have faith, that one day, maybe, there will have been a point to all of it - meanwhile others are saving, pensions are getting larger, people are succeeding -

Then it hits me - some hours later in fact - whilst I'm doing my 'day job' bent to it and tending to the huge garden at the south end of town - and some hope does return - I think of the Arabian Nights; stories within stories, unrelated stories linking with other unrelated stories some deliberately others not so - and this inspires enough for me to laugh off the mood and try again -

15/7/06

Some facts as I understand them:

The Middle East governments and lead-players will never be at peace; they do not desire it and the people will not be given the opportunity elsewhere to get close to it - for over 60 years it was and it still is front page news - Bush, Blair and bin Laden know far more about each other than they lead us to believe, they always did, even before September 11; however, now bin Laden is a spent force as is the mythical 'al-Qaeda', Bush and Blair perpetuate that myth because it pleases them to do so - There are terrorists, there always have been terrorists but there is not a single 'network' working under one umbrella (apart from the umbrella of what they would like to believe is 'faith'), that is the success of our Christian storytellers - It is all about controlling oil (on all sides), controlling the price of oil and ensuring the destabilization of countries that produce it - never forget Bush is a failed oil magnate - sadness is felt worldwide but nothing is ever going to change the way Israel sees itself - perpetually paranoid - because the US will perpetuate that because it knows that condition only too well and it allows for the other myth of the right to defend ones country by whatever means necessary - even as far as the abuse of Human Rights -

There are hundreds if not thousands of inhabitants of this region (Cumbria) of the UK who cannot read, or will not and whose education remains among the poorest in Britain - mostly men - I met one tonight - his name was Al (not sure if that was his real name but that was the one he gave me) and he was about 22 - he wore a dark blue football shirt under a paler one that he kept open, and jeans and sneakers - he was good-looking and kept his thick black hair in good condition - he was tanned too - but when he came up to me, smoking a cigarette, he talked and indeed had the look in his eyes of someone on the offensive, as if the world was always about to take something from him and therefore it always owed him something in return - he stood beside me as I waited at the bus stop, he went over to the timetable but span round too quickly to have read it - without saying 'hello' or 'excuse me' or any kind of disarming introduction he asked me what time the busses were - I told him but I said you'd better check just in case and I pointed at the timetable - he gave me a look that said 'are you fucking with me' and he walked off without saying anything else - social interaction skills at a minimum - later, when the teenage girls had gathered with their McDonald's and were chatting up older boys, when the boy-racers in the car park sat with their engines turned on and were revving them up to a high scream without actually intending to go anywhere, Al came back - he lingered at the edges watching the girls and hawking, contemplating chances - and I nodded and he just looked and so I asked if he'd sorted out which bus he was getting and it turned out it would be the same one I was expecting - he simply said 'Cockermouth one' in a real deep Cumbrian brogue - silence and so I offered him my paper to read to pass the time and he gave me that look again as if I was the craziest person in the world, that or he was the most offended and then I knew he couldn't read, or else had at one time had the skill but hadn't used it for so long he had forgotten how to - when the bus arrived, a small, rattling thing he waited in the midst of the queue and when a middle-aged lady and the man she was with (young, Dutch, carrying a large rucksack) got on he shoved in behind them and got on the bus without paying, went toward the rear and hunkered, low down in the seat so he couldn't be seen -

That bus was like a version of hell - riding into the wide empty night, the bleak hills dark above us - and within, the drunken girls and boys of Penrith stinking of fags and booze and fast-food meat, shouting conversations to each other about getting drunk and how drunk they were, over and over an endless replay of the night's inebriation as if they were stuck in a loop - the stench was overwhelming and the decibel level increased as the little bus struggled its way up and down - meanwhile Al slept like a baby -

When I get back I understand the Convention is in town - a gathering of Christian evangelicals from all over the world here for two long hot weeks of reinforced faith - no doubt they'll be saying their prayers for the 'good' of Israel, ignoring the fact that David has now become Goliath -

Oh, and Vodaphone have appropriated one of the best 'punk' songs of all time for it's new advertising campaign - Another Girl, Another Planet by The Only Ones - it makes me laugh (despite the fact I hate them for using every decent song under the sun for the sake of global sell-out) because I suspect they don't realize the song is a paean to heroin abuse?

14/7/06

One week in Winchester - I recall: sitting fantastically alone in a small cocktail bar on the high street last Sunday eve, two huge screens playing back the World Cup final thinking all the time about how great it would be if Italy won the cup for my Papa - I drank the finest gin in honour and text messages kept coming in from friends across the country all on their seat edges - and then that explosion of joy when they won - from me, from down this street to my surprise as the pub nearest exploded in deep shouts and a few fans ran out into the night leaping and raising their arms in the air, from across the continent -

The odd dry stench of a dying dog in the digs - steering clear of the kitchen where the poor thing flops around unable to hold itself up, a tumour the size of a football sticking out of its side like some damnable insult to the rest of its body - and the beast groans through the night. Why does the landlady keep it alive, why not put it down? Assume it must be painful for her too, something to do with loss and the fear of loss - her daughter is away in Italy for a month, her boyfriend is unable to visit so often because of his three daughters - all this reads in her face, a gentle greyness blooming across the skin around her eyes and onto her cheeks -

The stomach churning beauty of the guitar solo in The Stones' 'Sympathy For The Devil' - hard-edged, bitter-sweet -

Poor great Syd Barrett - the eulogies come in from all over: musicians, friends, journalists, modern pretenders - but the most moving are the blogs of ordinary people reporting how they were constantly awakened by his music, listening to it in gardens in the 60s or else in the clubs in London where the band first played - and his face staring back up from the pages of newspapers; those dark, haunted eyes - and how I recall the strange songs I used to make up with friends and band-members as kind of nods to Barrett: songs with names like The Singing Goldfish, Life's Too Important, PC Juniper the list goes on - saddest of all however is the fact that the local HMV doesn't stock any of his recordings -

And how the features of a place change dependent on one's mood and recent events - last time I was here the whole seemed marred and bleak, tainted with a sense of loss - now despite the quiet of Blackbirds and the density of tourists leading in the low light evenings, I bring with me more of a sense of anticipation and hope and true enough certain things begin to reflect that -

Well for a while at least - two thirtysomething men push each other around outside The Green Man pub as the sun goes down and the cloud of swifts reels low to the cathedral - nearby a natural audio mix of the cathedral bells at evening and a string quartet hired to play for an open air corporate do in the quadrant create a present discord -

Finally on the last evening, the landlady has the dog put down and immediately a sense of balance returns to the house, laughter and the two Italian students also staying are less frenetic in their pre-sleep energy and disruption -

The nearby fields are being harvested already, wide shock of vivid gold and the moon still evident, fading gently but there like a ghostly blemish in the early morning sky -

9/7/06

Travelling again; back to Winchester - length and breadth - on the coach to Penrith, the rain hammering down once more, a group of four twenty-something American boys in so'westers and huge rucksacks and looking like AWOLs from the US Army jabber constantly mid-bus - They look like clean cut Harvard types beneath the rainwater and layer of dirt, roughing it for their gap year - at the rear of the coach an old man coughs overly loud as if making a point; he's riding the bus back and forth, a proper Crow Charlie type in his rural lunacy and bedraggled jumper and hair (I love 'em) - he pushes his cough, forcing it out, like a parrot in tone, grating just behind the heads of these four boys, signaling the fact he doesn't like them; and best of all he plays on a hand-held video games machine that spouts out directions to the player in an accent not dissimilar to the four Americans: 'GO LEFT! GO LEFT! YEAH! YEAH! AAH! - it then repeats an eerie tune, a haunting synthesized piece like a soundtrack to the journey - the Yanks are talking about church - they attended a service this morning as they have in every stop they've made through Cumbria so far, but today they say they were let down; they wanted the 'full church experience' (I hear one say), the intimacy of sermons, the high mountain need - I assume they are evangelists of some kind from the bright revelations they are looking for, nothing humble about their desire for faith - and I gather they are from Los Angeles so linguistically speaking they are ev-Angel-ists!

Is writing fiction, storytelling or is it simply staring back at life through a window at whatever happens to be passing by? Shaven-headed pranksters caught between the reflections of whatever they see without? Perhaps it is just the transfer of language from one to another in order that disparate people can communicate, generate growth, ideas, charm?

Penrith on a Sunday is a time-trip back to what I remember of Sundays in the '70s and '80s - nothing moves except the bartered few making their way to, or arriving at, some bleak eatery or dark steakhouse - the only addition between then and now is the omnipresent McDonalds which despite warnings is still apparently the most popular place to eat on the day of rest - I am aware of charity shop windows like the eyes of the dead, plastic items and mothballs, dusty toys -

I think some more about writing - god knows why this is happening today but there you go - and wonder what purpose I have, and whether a purpose is necessary? Maybe this is a bigger question reflecting my life as it stands at present? Art imitating, and all that. But the joys of the page and the creation therein are with me more often than not these days - I've conquered some discipline in terms of regularity of writing, though my daily word count could still be much bigger - yet a regular pattern occurs which maintains a lack of sustenance: basically, I chop and change from one story to the next with no idea where each is going and just as soon as I've developed one another calls, waylaying me and the previous one is left for a while - this means that a first draft takes a hell of a time to complete -

I end up on the station platform (see what I mean?) - a long, sweeping area of space and possibility; so many people crossing paths, breaking out of old lives, rushing into new ones, bored, excited, tired, alive - filled, in this case, with bright red furniture and pillars marking the perspective, and a deep set flower bed spilling over with wild and tended plants -

The alternative is to surf around in a metaphorical T-shirt under a hot sun humming bars of 'Louie Louie', a glass of something cold at your fingertips - all of it in your tiny, tired mind - the one that just got a year older - keeping boredom and providence at bay - or waiting on the hilltops for the right moment of light, that perfect illumination that will record for eternity the correct nature of place - where old men have to explain their actions for fear of being misunderstood - all the gambling and the drinking, maybe the odd affair under cover of blitz or rocket attack - all the cigarettes, all the boxing, all the unutterable ignorance of a life they chose that did not lead them into learning, to gaining knowledge - their huge regrets carried on a long train through the uplands, weaving its way face on into the driving rain, the low cloud moaning in there, tired and wondering at the weight - a first class ticket on the Regret Express - but one man believes there should still be an opportunity to change minds, unambiguously; to provide mothers with a reason for all the bloodshed and agony; to let harrowed siblings have their grieving time there in the palms of their hands (which in reality should be filled with melted chocolate or the sticky residue of sweets or apples) - meanwhile Walden calls; Conrad suffers in London; Pike has sold all his possessions in an auction, all his effects gone on credit card repayments; and Crow Charlie is left gazing out at the fells and wishing he could get back to 1968 and watch The Who once again - He dreamt of being Keith Moon, with a wide open face and sense of dangerous fun - if he could have had that much opportunity - instead of which he settled for rugged warmth and security in a chair upholstered by his aunt and the hammer that shod horses and fixed fences and which he still carries in his belt loop -

The monochrome view from the farmhouse window, sometimes so simple, so beautiful he wants to weep; at other times so bleak that suicidal thoughts creep in - too much space and life disappearing, passing by -

His mother asks him: 'where is Kabul?'

He tells her and she asks: 'where is Afghanistan?'

He feels cheeky, something in him wants to shock her, scare her; so he replies: 'Not too far away, Mother. Close to Norway.'

He doesn't know why. It is in fact the howling effect of the train passing close by at the top end of the valley - the fallout of grief having this result on him - something sweet in his mouth might placate this feeling -

'D'you suppose a toffee?' his Mother suggests and he nods suddenly feeling like he is ten years old again.

A little later his mother asks why they are fighting out there in Afghanistan.

'Haven't they all had enough?' She is becoming semi-conscious, her monochrome tiredness overtaking her sat there by the unlit fire. Charlie doesn't answer, letting her drift off.

He is thinking of the time he waited for Mary Wakefield at Lancaster station. That night they went to a dance on the hill near the castle in an old Nissen hut decorated with lights and playing The Kinks and The Beachboys. She told Charlie that only a few months before she had boo-ed Bob Dylan while he was on stage in Manchester. Charlie had been impressed. At the end of the night they had promised each other that the following week they would go to the sea in Morecombe Bay or somewhere like that. But once he had got home he realized he would never call her again, he was too scared to see her again for fear of what he wanted to do with her. She telephoned the Post Office at Greystoke two weeks later and left a telegram message for him, it said:

'Hope you are okay stop Are we going to visit the sea question stop Meet you at same Sunday afternoon the twelfth stop Under the clock again stop Mary Message ends'

Brave woman, he had thought then. Still did.

Dad was alive then and he had been impressed with Charlie's luck, but he never let on and sent out warnings via Mum -

It was then that Charlie had foreseen the future and knew he did not have the courage to change it, to move against the inevitable - he looked into the crystal ball of his parent's eyes and stayed - he never mentioned Mary again - Dad 'celebrated' three weeks later by going on the drunk that led him to a shattered arm and fourteen stitches in his head - the beginning of the legacy and Charlie's inheritance - Mary had probably gone to university or to the sea, he never knew and never tried to find out.

Even so, he thought of her many times in the quiet moments like this with Mum asleep and nothing doing for a few hours. His courage had boarded the train and now form time to time aimed for fourteen stitches of a Saturday night falling asleep on the sofa with his mouth wide open and his arms crossed over his chest replaying the generations -

Trying to remain upright in the wind.

'Silly situation isn't it?' His Mum was waking.

And Charlie wished he did not feel so keenly; that he were more stupid, a regular buffoon - that would have been easier on them all probably -

For the killing of sheep, the guts and blood in the mud, the squealing of lambs and pigs were sights and sounds he wished he knew nothing of; how had he become immune to this pain? Mary wouldn't have let him.

It had been the end of that week that Dad was laid up in bed, groaning in sufferance that Charlie had learnt he could talk to crows -

And what of it? Now, what of it?

8/7/06

THIS DAY LAST YEAR

Jodrell Bank distant, watching over climbers here on the peak edge - clambering the soap-bar shaped rock formations patterned red/yellow/green with moss; the edge reflecting itself in every part -

'You are always seeking knowledge,' she says as we ascend - as she does I spot metallic coated beetles gathering on a slab of rock, milling in spirals -

Communication across immense distances both on and off the planet; these white discs dominate the landscape - giant soup tureens, blood cells, plate techtonics, saucers, slabs of bone (scapulae maybe?), robots, vitreous tears standing on opposing stout legs, blisters - all clean, clear, unnaturally so in comparison to the hefty, dark exposed blocks of basalt and granite here, eroded by the action of water and air, by trees and roots - polar opposites sharing space -

They might prove factions, some antagonistic pull, capable of constant battle?

I was going to see her, if I could, straining to get away; the satellites moored between two peaks named Lesser and Greater, both tough to climb. I thought she might be on top of one.

7/7/06

And it seemed that the light changed, grew more insistent; something mixed and dramatic and with great purpose rose up from the summit of Cat Bells toward the sky rather than the other way around - pale it was in the middle but bleeding out to a blue-grey and it parted in some manner so that a beam appeared to illuminate the summit. This as the transistor radio I had perched between two thick branches on an evergreen chimed mid-day. Big Ben, once an everyday vision, now so very far away. As I stood in the garden here, looking out over the lake toward that fell, I remembered the way we had all stood in silence last year, a week to the day after those bombings; how the whole city had stopped and became as quiet as it was here today (despite even the RAF practice run reminding us we are at war). Nothing and no-one moved then as now; Cat Bells and that odd formation of light, changing, outpouring, taken up then down across the hillside with a bitter wind ensuing later - sometimes I like nothing better than to break the mould and remove myself from what everyone else is doing, I'll often seek out solitude over company, but not today - to day it felt keener because of the unified commemorations elsewhere, and most importantly in the city I once thought of, until recently, as my home. I wanted above all to see the faces of my friends there, to look upon them living strong, courageous - with all that might keep them safe -

5/7/06

The actors were locked out of themselves. Doors slammed into their paths - backstage and elsewhere. They missed their cues. Perhaps it was the fault of the oncoming storm caught over the mountains and fells nearby? Forked lightning and thunder knocked out the early evening and ranged on into the night. The actors carried on as they so often do whilst about them the lights flickered and the power went down more than once. But in the bar afterwards they found they could no longer speak to each other in the same amiable way that they had only hours before. They eyed each other suspiciously, drank each others drinks without asking, and ignored the anecdotes and tales of past roles. It was a mess. Egos bled out of ear holes and onto the floor, some in floods of tears that dampened the foyer irreparably, others so simply wounded eventually had nothing left to give and became thespian miasma there on the carpet or chose to run out of the theatre and into the tempestuous night never to be seen again!

3/7/06

What I learnt today:

The afternoon is pale for an old man, a limbo;
Brambles are rampant and primeval; they cut you up, make the skin of your arm a palette for their signature;
Times don't change where the military are concerned, only their equipment does;
Experience counts;
A mother's love might just work wonders;
'Great' Britain is a mythological concept;
Sonic attack exists: Palestinian children suffer stress from the sonic booms of Israeli jets flying over Gaza and deliberately breaking the sound barrier - but, also, you can become politicized too young these days;
I am a lucky man - there is no bloodshed on my doorstep;
Thunder is very beautiful;
Jesus is not always your friend;
The Taliban are not a 'spent force' - if you find a 'night letter' pinned to your door in Kandahar you may not see the following dawn;
Why did no-one design those England World Cup flags you see everywhere on cars to fly at half mast? Will no one ever learn?;
Continuum is a great word to describe the rainfall I've witnessed here for over two hours;
Responsibility is a fact of life - why do so many deny it's existence?