RANDOM ECHOES - ITALY 30/10/05

Festival of the Thrush (La festa della Torno).

Hunters in the hills – shotgun reports echo regularly even before dawn. Pop pop.

At a point of no return effectively as health breaks down in the hills, and all sense of place is lost for a day. As if this daily fog here had passed into me and I had woken with it and thereby it keeps me at bay from the rest of the world, shrouded from family, from my lover, even from the subtly beautiful town of Pienze which we visit for lunch. Bizarre, to be walking and talking but silently keeping in check the nausea and the dizziness, and the overwhelming sump of tiredness. Unable even to take in the views across the Tuscan landscape, though I know I took a couple of photos; or the fact that at one point we stand in the center of a beautiful duomo looking up at the bright portico seventy feet over our heads. In the car, I am unable even to move for fear I will vomit; it takes all my will just to hold it back until we arrive at our small cottage and Pol sets me up a bed in the garden to be warmed by the descending sun. I sleep for over ten hours and wake as if it were a different person it had all happened to. But am left with an ugly residue of the day.

Autumn shows itself directly in the withering vines outside the cottage. Particularly in the late afternoon sunlight, which has a tendency to readily become hazy and dreamlike at this time of year, forming patches of mist yet never obscuring things entirely. So the vines, with their bunches of white grapes once thick and strong and hanging heavy now turning purple brown and gorged on by fruit flies and wasps, loose themselves and reflect sadly there in their rows some sense of forgotten glory. At the end of one row a white plastic bowl has been left, the vestige of human presence probably from a few weeks back when the idea would have been to harvest the grapes and take them either for eating or primarily for making into wine. Not this year. I look on that view and its passing is sad, brings a sense of finality to me, of inevitability that cannot be fought (perhaps it is simply a reflection that our time here in Italy is coming to a close). Yet, in there is beauty too. The colours are still vivid even in their death throes – the light coming through a paler leaf, the almost icing of must on the skins of fruit that haven’t yet turned. Caravaggio knew these things and ran with them every time he painted a still life. He wasn’t interested in the plentiful, bountiful world the church wanted him to represent; he had to show that the deity could equally present a rotting world at times as much as anything else and there came earthly beauty if you dared to look long and hard enough, and challenge the single world view of his time.

RANDOM ECHOES - ITALY 29/10/05

Walking through Citta della Pieve, Sunday afternoon - timeless - of grand Italian villas built in colonial style now run down - like ‘The Leopard’ - once bustling with life and fortune and now cobwebbed and overgrown, waiting for rennovation – imagining the lady of the house greeting her friends and visitors from the pillared entrance as they arrive up the tree-lined drive toward the pale blue and white house – the light came reflective from the west, diffuse in the late autumn haze, acute through the golden brown leaves – for a moment it all turned into the set of a movie, some poetic sensed European arthouse flick with reminiscent symbols of endings (which of course are coming close) or change – dreaming of another time, yet also highly present in this one – spiders webs hanging from street signs of roads called ‘via G. Gallilei’ or ‘via Giordano Bruno’ and caught in the fading sunlight – strange that now they celebrate and remember men they once branded heretics and burned or imprisoned - of countless citizens of all ages sitting together on benches and talking, sometimes emphatically and profusely, or else watching local football matches played by school kids from open terraces – in anticipation of tomorrow’s festa, like xmas eve or something similar, full of potential, enjoyment, of eating, and of marking the year change (clocks going back tonight, harvests ended) – waiting for sleep and nursing hangovers, dancing underneath the twisting vines and wisteria heavy with seed pods like butter beans.

RANDOM ECHOES - ITALY 27/10/05

Up on the estate a man is duped by the previous tenant of an old farmhouse into believing that a stone artifact in the shape of a Doric pillar head and now cemented into a recess on the front wall, is a genuine Etruscan relic. Of course it isn’t. The previous tenant was a clever fraudster who was good with his hands and this feature added and additional £10k to the asking price.

24 HOURS TO GO
Last night I slept better thanks to brandy
A small confrontation in the day
Broken backed
Coffee on the stove bubbled through
The tart smell of applewood in the grate
Papa in carpal tunnel bandage sat with arm raised
Paint-stained clothes stank of ammonia
A man didn’t know the meaning of siblings
Twenty-four hours of duty left
Voices of conscience barked at night
My prize: a bundle of kindling heavier than a head.

The loudest noises at night come from the trains in the gully below, about half a mile away. You hear them a long way off at first, their hectic whisper contained and pushed ahead by the hills on either side of the tracks. Then they charge through close by, some of tremendous trans-European length, with their oddly UFO-like sets of three-pointed headlights, two below one above floating in the dark and taking the curves at high speed.

RANDOM ECHOES - ITALY 26/10/05

Fog again this morning; dense and with that permanent sense of being enclosed in one’s immediate space - the white noise of nothing, a blank canvas.

Each vine thick with
Rotten moments
Dribble tearful
Attacked
Tries to retain dignity
To hold form
But each quick lap, lick
Or suckerful
Ages and denies them
Quintessence and they are
Sweet offal for hornets
Prophesying dangerous,
Open-sored and split words
That ooze readily
When trying to be honest

What moves in the spaces
Between: the interstices,
The integers?
Their balance and tenure?
A finch with mottled beak
Singing drunk;
Some ungodly things
Dancing, making hellish
Business for the fool
And the beautiful courtesan
Jolly even in face
Of trouble

RANDOM ECHOES - ITALY 25/10/05

Our painting job is turning into a sentence of hard labour. We are into the fifth day and are still in the same room as when we started (with another room yet to be started on). The heat and porous stucco suck at the paint, drying it rapidly and slowing progress. The views from the house are extraordinary, particularly the sunsets which are incredibly moving (reminiscent of Leonardo’s background landscapes – gold tipped clouds, the awesome fading perspective of rolling hills and hilltop towns and villages revealed, the sinking mist creating islands within and giving different aspects each evening) – but at present these feel like a distant bonus that we can only appreciate for ten minutes before the sun disappears at the end of the day, when our back breaking work has been done. The patron pays us a pittance, a laughable amount of money. We are disappointed and angry and we await a confrontation when we finish and make clear the work we have done.

TRACK OF THE WEEK

Diamond In Your Mind – by Solomon Burke (original by Tom Waits) from the album ‘Don’t Give Up On Me’ – under strain this is a good reminder to keep your perspective

RANDOM ECHOES - ITALY 24/10/05

Thick fog as the shutters are opened, spectral forms outside of thinning vines, garden artifacts, bunches of apple twigs; self contained feeling, nothingness beyond the tree line becoming a motif.

The whole family has to be involved in the making of polenta. Primarily because the mixture has to be stirred by hand constantly for 45 minutes on a hot stove so each person takes it in turn to do so for a five minute stint each. And it gets tougher as the process goes along because the mixture thickens to a large, heavy, golden mass.

Up at the Loggia, Virgil learns of Jesus visiting a dying mother, of family members waiting and waited for, of a long dead husband seen at the foot of a bed, of revelations about strippers and videos and local porn rings, of much laughter and hilarity and riches made.

RANDOM ECHOES - ITALY 23/10/05

Some unseen, secretive bastard steals £300 from me by electronic means back in the UK. I find out a week later. The police need a report on my return.

Padre Cecco, 74, short sighted, thick glasses and prune-skin face, walking through Citta on Sunday afternoon composing sermons, pondering a mystery: “Why is it, no, how is it, no, is it possible that the distance between those fallen autumn leaves on the paving stones in Piazza Perugino (as they fall there every year) could be markers of time? Metaphysical as much as corporeal? Not the leaves themselves but the spaces between? The leaves are way posts, yes perhaps spiritual ones, beautiful honey brown each, some stuck flat to the concrete others curled and dry, more prone to fly away, and between these life passes. The reflection of many Sunday afternoons and of the proceedings of a life between each. The young families with their children in pushchairs, wrapped up against the start of winter; the four soccer players with their strange haircuts; the group of tourists parading slowly through the main street and the market; that bunch of local people whose faces I recognize, each of them, strolling after mass this morning having their photo taken with that man in the woolen hat who looks very familiar to me yet is not one of my usual congregation. There is quite a stir going on now.” Padre Cecco stops and looks amazed at the face of the man he now knows is an actor from a famous television series. A police drama series. Cecco’s favourite. Cecco is excited. Cecco joins the hubbub around the actor and his small entourage signing autographs, having photo’s taken with wives and siblings. Cecco forgets pondering mysteries and shakes the hand of the actor with the bulbous nose, a man whose face he knows in every detail, a companion almost there every other night in his living room with him: solid, honest, intelligent, heroic. A character to admire and aspire to. Cecco is overwhelmed with gratitude. But the stranger who is not a stranger cannot answer the praise with any sense of reality or equality, for Cecco is simply one among many.

Items on the market, Citta della Pieve:
- china plate with image of an old steam train arriving at a station, replicated in embossed blue pattern
- 2 German army helmets from WWII
- an Italian tank soldier’s helmet from WWII
- a bronze angel statue with huge unfurled wings, ready to fly
- a selection of humourous postcards from approx 1930s, beautifully drawn and coloured
- so many poorly painted images of Christ performing different miracles, seemingly always beneath a sky so dark blue as to be representing a world in permanent night
- a thick metal bracelet of unknown origin (it is claimed) made to look classical/pagan, but not original for sure

RANDOM ECHOES - ITALY 20/10/05

Heavy rain storms overnight, sounding off on the tile roof. Here in the small single storey house it is possible that we might get washed away, afloat like a boat.

Waking and the clouds are thick but broken over Monte Amiato – they move fast and acute, almost falling over each other, chasing tomorrow.

Up on ladders and scaffolds, fingers covered white with fresh stucco – a prepared board with tools and paints, brushes and rags. Outside the arched windows a view across to Chiusi and Montepulciano that changes from hour to hour with differing light and weather conditions. Sometimes the hills and towns are closer but less defined; at others they are crystal clear, almost seemingly within reach. The artist is aching between his shoulder blades from bending his head and neck hours at a stretch to complete the commission, face and hair covered with fine dust, gesso, drops of pale paint in his beard. While the view beyond now turns silver, lit from within, where he would rather be sat on his bony arse with his paints and a tin-nibbed pen in the lee of a cypress tree.

CHARACTER

In the Loggia Virgil learnt of the paralyzed son’s trade as an arms dealer selling for British Aerospace and other similar companies. A tetraplegic promoting missiles, guidance systems, smart bombs etc. He made himself very wealthy; bought himself time. He is now selling his paintings (at first just a hobby) through a small gallery in Bonn. At the opening night of the exhibition there, his 'other' profession is kept quiet (as it is at all social functions, large or small) and is referred to simply as ‘engineer’. Virgil feels sick. He is also told that the son will not eat meat unless he knows from where it has been sourced and if it has been humanely treated and slaughtered. So Virgil takes the website address of the gallery where some of the paintings can be viewed. There is a pair of views of the Loggia itself painted from different angles and under opposing weather conditions; there is also a painting of a Holocaust memorial in Budapest containing thousands of shoes of Jews and gypsies killed. Virgil wants to speak to this man and ask him questions, ask him whether he feels he is paying back some regret through these ironies and hypocrisies?

RANDOM ECHOES - ITALY 19/10/05

A fire needs sense, a plan, pattern to ensure it takes - particularly in a small stove such as the one here in the small rural cottage. First, fine apple twigs and small branches that have fallen over the summer and dried in the intense afternoon heat (with the added beneficial addition of the subtle sweet aroma they give off too); followed by some larger hunks of wide, fibrous bark. Finally, when these two have taken without interruption, add the short, thick cut logs.

On the train to Orvieto her face was reflected in the trees and on the vines – a minor miracle.

Orvieto cathedral – nun sits on a small stool alone in a chapel, silent prayers, before a piece of cloth with supposedly some stains from the blood of Christ on it – there’s a theme developing here, see the church in Lago Maggiore. This relic is stretched and framed for all to see, placed high up on an altar. I start to wonder about all these blood stained relics and wonder if there wasn’t some medieval production line somewhere. I mean how come all these sanguine parts of Christ ended up in Italy? Someone somewhere was making a mint out of original religious marketing.

RANDOM ECHOES - ITALY 18/10/05

Cutting rotting grapes from the vine, late at night once the hornets have cooled down and disappeared (and I mean hornets the size of your thumb so yes they scare and sting – 7 times and your dead!) – thick and sultry dark grapes oozing with smelly juice; cutting them so they drop into a bucket with a satisfying splash and plop in there with the rest. Then knocking down the loose dry leaves turned brown and falling in the slightest breeze.

TRACK OF THE WEEK

Allowing 2 this week to mark the culture shift to travelling:
- Personal Jesus by Johnny Cash – from the album ‘America IV’
- Eternity Theme by Eleni Karaindrou - from the soundtrack album to the film ‘Eternity And A Day’

RANDOM ECHOES - ITALY 16/10/05

Cousins changed beyond recognition after 15 years or so. One now a fat middle-aged man with a thick untrimmed moustache - looks like a character from an Edwardian parlour piece. Dressed in shambolic white suit, standing in the background of wedding photographs looking on at the brother who no longer speaks to him because he has never repaid money he borrowed.

Driving back from Lago Maggiore to Umbria, five hours on the A1 central motorway through Italy – passing: walled cemeteries; Milan industry and chrome flyovers; silhouetted trees Sunday afternoon with three farmhands still out there working hard at harvesting; roadside kiosks selling fruit and water, dark women standing there on the central reservation; lone prostitute out toward the slip roads in Rho; through Piedmont into Emiglia Romana into Tuscany into Umbria; through Florence pointing out Brunelleschi’s dome from afar; truckloads of pigs squeezed in around Mantua; cavalry horses transported all day long; nightingale piano outside Bologna; Johnny Cash & Bobby D all the way.

LAGO MAGGIORE - sketch

Of wry peasant stories and induced dreams
Of historical meetings between powerful leaders
Of a boy lost one night 1944 mistaken for a spy
being shot at as he crossed the bridge home
Of tripe and spaghetti mixed for supper before Il Duce
left alone to eat and dream up more crazy schemes
Of near misses with the Borromeo’s
Of near death experiences beneath the shallow waves at Cannero
Of one lung and a thousand stair climb
Of Amperes monolith pumping energy into Piedmont
playing electric atoms off against each alp
Of clichés and stereotypes broken by the season’s changes
and the necessity to go with them
Of sleep deprivation in a quiet lakeside room
Of metal played on metal as a source of spiritual harmony
Of sleep now it is silent
Of naked freedom
Of a camp bed
Of humour and comedy above all else
Of canopied fishing kayaks competing to be the brighter
Of strange silhouettes in the center of the lake that carry on playing
Of keeping your nose clean and your eyes peeled
Of distribution of logs on an autumn night, each correct place
Of meaningless words and translations in a thousand languages
Of folktales replayed
Of each ridge of Monte Rosso down to the waterline
Of words that will become mainstays, prayers,
passwords, codes for new form
Of hugging Arabs close to the war memorial turning their backs
on strict devotion, overwhelmed by nature’s mirror they gaze on
Of streets named after writers, artists, politicians, and nobodies
Of heroes and villains in one shell
Of oily fish and turpentine
Of cleaning the late afternoon with potato skins
Of these unrelated things in the eye of the clock
Of silver omens in the day, of wooden ones at night
Of the argument of the retreating communist
Of the spine turned outward
Of borders close at hand
Of one hundred mallards flying west
Of pretend towns on the other side that only come out at night
Of partners in crime, love and adventure
Of the thousand yard stare
Of two books with no covers
Of a crooked hand
Of brandy and Bacchus imitators
Of palaces built and lost to the previous century
Of electronic alarms and half-brothers with wiry grey beards
Of rainstorm palms
Of egg albumen and of cormorant castles
Of doorways into nothingness
Of the edge of things: jetties seeking for some place
Of blood dried on cloth and scientist priests
whose propaganda seduced all
Of orchid churches
Of pale open walls like the flesh of men and women
Of pirate heads and coconuts and Popeye paintings
Of forgotten striped sun beds
locked away in rows at the close of season
Of idle drawbridges and dinghies upside down
and of the lone rower making the length mid-water

RANDOM ECHOES - ITALY 14/10/05

Autumn chill - still the city maintains warmth of place and unexpected serenity – even that despite the thrash metal fan on the overcrowded train to Verbania (one hour North of Milan – our destination) who decides to let us suffer with him the throes of adolescent angst and shite taste in music and who looks himself like he is not enjoying it but using it solely for statement.

Milan Central Station – awesome edifice (perhaps built by The Big ‘M’ – not sure, it’s grandiose enough for it to have been) – mythical winged chariots adorn the front, the interior mapped with astrological signs carved over entrances in yellow stone.

Faces of the Milanese are very different to those in Rome or Umbria for example, a wider genetic mix – German, Swiss, French. There are the dark, almost stereotypical Italians but the blonde haired or fairer skinned northerners alongside confound expectation and place. And of course the cooler more fashion conscious Milanese display their peacock character far more than anywhere else I’ve been in Italy – this does mean however they are noticeably less warm-hearted and open, without that sense of natural sensitivity to other’s needs that the more rural Italians have even within an hour’s radius (Piedmont, Lombardy) of Milan itself. The way they greet or assist you is far more aloof, hurried, and judgmental. But the Milanese have always considered themselves to be ‘apart’ from the rest of Italy and this goes right back to the later medieval and renaissance rule of the Dukes of Sforza who campaigned bloodily for their own state.

Pol learning Italian from an out of date tourist phrasebook, seemingly quite useless: “Be careful! I can’t slow down!” – “Would you like to make up a foursome?” – “This is a lovely straw hat.” Smacks a little of some ex-pat novel about life under the Tuscan sun, you know the kind of thing: Aga Saga’s in Italy; hateful, tepid literature.

Stresa – the jewel of the lake, where Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt met one day to sign treaties and carve the future world up.

A parting image -
Butler's Wharf, London

RANDOM ECHOES 13/10/05

Countdown - last day

An empty red room, ten thousand ghosts in there all connected - an arbitrary mark on a wall that dates the entire history of occupancy: a splash of red wine from a house warming party, in a property that never was a home or warm either - the ambience marred by too much struggle and tribulation and now it's just another aspect of history made day to day - I guess if I took the time I could remember everything that went on in there, every twitch of every muscle, every whisper, every oath, every mistake (and man so many), but you know what? I've never felt less sentimental in my life. I'm gone Brixton, gone.

Harold Pinter wins Nobel Prize for Literature which means it is exactly 8 years since I moved in to the flat on Coldharbour Lane that I am moving out (see blog entry dated 27/9/05 to see why).

3 good omens in silver:
- a wyvern on a rooftop in Faringdon EC1
- an elasticated hairband
- a foil cup for a sweet cheesecake

Postcard Princess - sketch

badly shaken, the eldest daughter left:
an empty bed strewn with pine cones

a couple drowned in gold embrace
shrouded with white linen

a Japanese servant with painted face,
peers through window open

the superior cat all in grey
hunts grace beside ornamental pond

in patience that daughter collected
and pinned these on her wall

until her jealous sister leaps to covet
the space she left and burns them

sibling revenge of images traced
now ash bones


Newcastle-under-Lyme, September 2005

People place - Tate Modern, London

RANDOM ECHOES 12/10/05

Countdown - 2 days to go

Taxi dash across London middle of the night - stashed ironing board, guitar, telly and a proud castor oil plant to Bermondsey in the company of a friendly taxi driver high on fasting for Ramadan. He tells me all the different ways to get from Coldharbour Lane to Southwark Park Road in approx 10 minutes (which is nothing short of a miracle in itself) and he talks so fast, semi-deliriously. At the end of the journey he helps unload the car and then repeats the directions again for me twice just in case I ever get lost. Thank you, whatever your name was.

It would seem the questions regarding pantomime dames were provident.

Bring out the Cosmo in you. If you do he'll become deliriously happy, start to shake and then levitate. Believe me I've seen it happen.

2 lovely coincidences on the South Bank:
- meeting creative guru/gent who only 45 minutes before I had been talking about with affection in another part of the city, and whom I had not seen for 18 months
- explaining to a friend in a crowd how and why I love the woman I do and as I do she is standing right behind me having just arrived

TRACK OF THE WEEK

Losing Streak - by Eels, from the album 'Blinking Lights and Other Revelations' - simply a great song from a great album, a song reminding me where I am at right now, hopefully where you are too!

RANDOM ECHOES 11/10/05

Countdown - day 3 (3 to go)

The household items I'm putting out on the street in the process of moving are contributing to the economy of night-time scavengers - that strange breed (not exclusive to London) halfway between tramp and poverty stricken opportunist. I watch two quite different examples last night, around 8pm. Dickensian mist hanging round the street lamps, a broken down bus at a stop further along the road - troops of passengers standing silhouette in the shadows and cursing their bad luck. Then the first scavenger appears, literally out of nowhere (for a moment I wonder if he hasn't just come up through a manhole), an expected example perhaps. He is in his mid-forties and wears baggy, ill fitting and dirty beige tracksuit trousers with a natty black sweatshirt; his bald crown is capped on either side by thin springy curls, almost blond. He watches the street avidly, seeming afraid of being spotted or else embarrassed. And he mutters inaudibly. First he toes a couple of cardboard boxes outside the taxi booth and the tiny jerk chicken shop, but there is nothing that interests him there. Passing me, he eyes my rucksack then opens a polystyrene burger carton with nothing more than a few scrapes of ketchup inside. After that he heads for the next mound of refuse left outside the flats for next day's collection. He picks up a stack of VHS video tapes, some with the tape hanging loose; he picks through them reading the labels then puts them back and they collapse, strewn across the pavement. Muttering wildly again he retreats and heads back on himself having found nothing of any worth to him. A Nigerian woman dressed pretty smartly, parks up in her VW Golf (second hand?) and wanders quickly over to the same pile of things and pulls out a microwave oven, it's cord hanging loose and with the plug removed. She holds it at arms length as if it might snap at her or be full of some unidentifiable matter, she sniffs at it, she opens and closes the door, looks inside and then bundles it off into the boot of the car and away she goes. It's a recycled economy to a degree, somewhat seedy and grim, but it appears to reduce waste. I find it both gratifying and sad at the same time.

Down by the river I spotted some people walking all over the world - they were surprisingly respectful, even took their shoes and socks off.

The Dixie Queen left her moorings at 6.50pm. A crowd gathered to watch her depart. The little boys watching with their parents, they asked what it was doing as it stopped midstream and performed an elegant smooth 360 degree turn, blowing its call and heading downriver toward Canary Wharf. It was a fine performance. However, the steamer looked precarious and fragile as it entered the shipping channel and moved away. I expected to hear bad news the next day. Fortunately, it did not come and this morning Dixie Queen was back, tethered to the mooring barge, rocking gently.

In recent days Virgil didn't want to listen to his portable digital jukebox as usual when walking around the city. He wanted final access to its sounds, to let them leave an imprint on his nervous system before he departed. A walking audio blotter soaking each nuance up, letting it reflect inside. All the things he'd despised now became fragile and dear through impermanence: the constant traffic decibel attack, the tap tap of bicycle pedals pulling up behind him on the pavement, the ricochet of a ship's horn bouncing off Tower Bridge and Butler's Wharf, the babble of thousands of mobile phone conversations taking place on the hoof. The stream. The oaths and curses of the mad people and the sane (?) ones. The winding of cranes. The lull of a faucet running. The bullying cormorant calling. The bubble of the coffee pot at 7.35am.

East Coast Epitaph

You came this way on a 125 - bleached hair, shades
With your sexy graceful afternoon shivers
Then dressing again your feline hand
Soft poured from leather sleeves
Dropped motorbike stars on the carpet
Before you carried yourself away
On that bright machine

I went out, threw candyfloss from the West pier
Saccharine meteors to turn the tide red
God knows this town at the edge of the world
Could do with a little colour
Its name’s no longer pronounceable
On road signs the first letter eats the last
Like a giant Pac-man


Deal, Kent 2003 - 2005

RANDOM ECHOES 10/10/05

Countdown - day 4 (four days to go)

12 hours solid driving on the road, coincidentally commemorating the publication of Ginsberg's Howl somewhere near Aylesbury (on the radio an article states that perhaps a new Beat Generation is called for in the current world climate, an artistic renaissance of dissent, but I believe it will never be allowed to happen because artists are no longer encouraged to define themselves as outsiders, as observers and commentators, challenging the status quo, instead they are accumulated and assimilated through offers of celebrity, made safer that way) - being chased by demon adminstrators and puckering landlords - ascending the Wolds into the low cloud moisture and fog, screaming rain all the way back into London only to turn around and repeat it all again the next day - though the autumn sun accompanies us this time, a car full of plants and shrubs and CDs and shoes and boots - and presents for neices who shine with beauty and joy and lighten the travelling load for an hour or two - then descending Fish Hill with the Vale of Evesham lying out there beyond, vast - after the car has reached her destination and is left there now until we return, the typically English phenomena of works on the railway line puts us out onto a bus route in the middle of the Black Country for Sunday evening, past Longbridge ghost factory, past Bourneville and Cadbury World, in the shadow of strange chrome pyramids which may or may not be connecting the Illuminati so they can keep an eye; scoffing tomatoes and sucking limes to cleanse the pallate, on the back seat - unemployed ghouls and bike riding joy riders standing around in car parks and street corners - my eyes fill up with groggy sleep and now permanently red-rimmed, I get dizzy spells and that odd floating feeling on terra firma when my balance system kids itself its still in the car driving, carrying that motion on - at one point I am told I've turned grey, blending in with the facia of the bus - singing songs from 'Oh What A Lovely War' and discussing pantomime dames - what works and what doesn't when a man gets up in drag?

Forgotten Zone -
Southwark, London

RANDOM ECHOES 7/10/05

Countdown - day 7 (1 week to go)

Never get into a lift with a certain P.B. He has been stuck in lifts 6 times in the last 3 months. It is his curse. He gives off an electro-static charge every so often, due in part to his heavy smokers breath after any form of exercise (even just walking from the smokers den to the lift). His bulk rubs against his clothing causing friction and static charges, which are in turn carried around his body by his profuse sweat. This shorts out the elevator's signal when he presses the button for his destination or even stands in the vicinity of the electric wiring behind the panel facia. The elevator starts it ascent or descent but then shorts out almost immediately between floors. Anyway, this is not meant as a personal attack on the man, just a warning to you that's all.

Finally get hold of my replacement debit card, four weeks to the day after I asked for a new one and two weeks beyond it's original expiry date. Erosion has taken place, anger has been ditched as worthless, acceptance of the lack of control one has over some aspects of life has settled into a fine dust somewhere in a corner of a drawer in the filing cabinet the administrators dragged into my soul.

A. came round last eve. He sat on my almost empty bedroom floor and went through the piles of CDs I had weeded out of my collection as part of moving out. He shuffled through each one, making a pile for himself and commenting on the quality of them. He completed his joyful search and recognised he now has enough new music to last him a year. Which can only be a good thing.

I want to say a fond goodbye to an old man I never met but have heard much about recently; wish him well on his way from this life. By all accounts he had a great garden and I intend to give a little bit of it back in honour of his memory.

Never trust your landlord, they'll shaft you then put all the responsibility on you for it, making out they are squeaky clean even though they never provided you with a habitable home in the first place.

Politeness thrown straight out the window of a moving train by a 42 year old raver with a guitar and pretensions to be the new Gallagher brother. Spatial awareness nil. Grace nil. Respect nil. Intellect nil. Weasel eyes and cursing those nearest for even breathing. Rebel with an ulcer.

RANDOM ECHOES 6/10/05

St Agnes Road, Southwark - millenarian chants and protestation written in marker pen on the side of a large white van, and in the doorway of a house talks of 'refusal', 'revelation' and 'retribution'. The new three 'R's?

12 hours in Manchester - starts with an argument on the Viccy Line at 10am and ends with a journey back down the country at 10pm the same day wondering why ticket reservations make strangers of us all.

TRACK OF THE WEEK:

Into My Arms - by Nick Cave, from the album 'The Boatman's Call' - only love (?) can change your heart/mind/soul

RANDOM ECHOES 3/10/05

Waking early, Virgil was aware he had been dreaming - a bloody dream of war, some commando attack on an enemy stronghold of some kind - typical movie look - choreographed cinematographic images in his mind - teams of hard bitten soldiers hiding behind ditch walls and fences, waiting to launch their surprise, but then all hell breaking loose as the team are spotted and tracers start to fly, grenades explode around them - then a jump cut to Virgil alongside another team member stood by a gateway, the gunfight still going on behind them somewhere, waiting for a staff car they have spotted along the road to arrive carrying important personnel - when the car halts waiting for the gate to open Virgil and his compatriot pounce, guns at the ready - the figures within are surprised and stunned to have been caught out this way - Virgil recognises journalists from his own country sitting beside high ranking secret police-style officers, the journalists look sheepish, one even nods 'hello' to Virgil - Virgil is confused about many things: time zones, trust, why he is carrying a weapon at all. As he ponders these things the car drives away snagging his ally with it and dragging him along the ground until it turns a corner and he is released, rolling away. Virgil runs to him and his chest is all abraded and bloody but the man is still alive and moaning. It was this event that directly woke Virgil up. It was still early, not long before dawn, and the first autumn chill was present in the house. Virgil got up and went into the kitchen where he found a corn-on-the-cob had fallen on the floor overnight from the shelf above the cooker. It was odd there in the middle of the room, alien and furry, though also not dissimilar to a hand-grenade.

Smithfield Market, early morning, Monday - large cuts of meat, blood, organs kept in clear plastic bags, the smell of meat, splashes of thin crimson, groups of workers standing round in bloody white overalls - an ambulance arrives wheeling it's way into Grand Avenue and pulls up outside a compartment, the paramedics jump out and start working on a large man who has fallen and cracked his head on the paving, his blood mingling with the cattle blood; he is alive but badly hurt. Nearby, I overhear a young man within a group of onlooking meat packers say: "He's always been a bit sick. Seen the women he goes with?"

Partial solar eclipse today - antumbra (great word) or negative shadow is cast on to the earth's surface; primarily across Africa and most visible over Sudan in this instance.

Conductor blows his whistle fast, October rain is half his song; the readers in the quiet zone are offended when the plastic-armed teens start rioting dirty on the rail; the bridge groans awkward, patience blown skyward; each is trying to get out of a glass cage, the comedown at tired end of day; watching the edits over copper on the way; and just who is your personal trainer anyway, do you get one when you run out of ideas?

Wired man on Coldharbour Lane, a living robot of a man - walking into traffic without looking to protect himself, he just points the direction and goes; dark eyes, dead in there, never look directly at the drivers of the vehicles, he just presumes to have his space and gets there slowly as if challenging the cars to run him down at speed - He walks then straight limbed, stiff, almost economic, inured to any fear, the tight waist-length leather jacket he wears also confines his movements, further adding to the robot similarity. His shaved head built like a dome goliath, thick wedged skull. Something intense and unpredictable about him.

Yesterday's (Sundays) horoscope reads: 'pile all your belongings into a box and move on' - which is precisely what I began doing on Saturday!

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."

LOVE WALK

Once 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?

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.

Forgotten Zone (with message?),
Hoxton, London

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

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.

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.

Forgotten Zone -
Loughborough Junction, SW9

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.

TRACK OF THE WEEK:

'Are We A Warrior' - by Ijahman Levi, from the Island album Are We A Warrior - epic Rasta/Blakean reggae protest song, awesomely beautiful - this song might just save your life.

Abstract (dawn window) - Newcastle Under Lyme

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.”

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.

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

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.

Forgotten Zone - Clapham, London

Pigeon in the alley

Muses on lichen
Amuses dust
Seems to be a positive purr
That cannot help it billow ‘yes’

But the tone longs
To escape its cold foot creed
Of eternal patience
Floated on puddles

Round, round


London, September 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."

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.

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

Forgotten Zone - Bermondsey, 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.

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.

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.