Posts
Where do I sit if there isn’t a seat,
Your lap of ice with a moth-like sheet?
It powders me with a fine silver dust;
Shift along, I can make do for now
this space is enough for a finite end.
Absurdly distant you make waves
over me, while arguing for God.
Casually restrained and precise,
Articulate even, but not nice,
a Net Present Value with a discount
for evil is no argument for death.
Once we sat in the sun, a train
Came and soon you waged war.
I remember we talked, Darlington
Ninety seven, your wings’ silvery
mark is on me and millions more.
Dec 13th, 14th and 24th 2010
Monday 13 December 2010
Saturday 4 December 2010
Maybe chapter 1?
Strangely idealistic despite a record of under achievement Marcus still believed that he could make a success of life. Proud of the transition he had made he’d become a faithful man limiting his indiscretions to thoughts and gazes, but this self imposed discipline did not make him content. Moreover he now found it difficult to relate easily to others, well aware that his past had been the cause of unhappiness and that some including his daughters had not been able to express their disappointment in him for fear of doing further damage, the removal of lechery from his behaviour did not mean that the intent was not there and this disparity between desire and action created a nervous intensity in him that barred easy company. At an age when he should have been putting lust behind him one or two of his friends’ partners or chance acquaintances attracted him so that he couldn’t easily look them in the eye. It is as if some residual tenderness remained toward life and though he was never one to be afraid of being alone Marcus maintained a longing for the intimacy of others.
The little restaurant business that Marcus ran with his wife Sharon had a small but loyal band of regulars and a steady stream of tourists in the summer but its heyday had passed and despite some good reviews and fabulous evenings in earlier years its lifecycle had moved into its period of decline. Each week paying suppliers or creditors became a test of disingenuous virtuosity, missing a phone call to avoid a lie, persuading customers to pay in cash, giving chefs post dated cheques. Marcus was well aware that they were living on borrowed time but would still be generous with portions or a small whiskey at the end of a successful evening for his favourites. Late in the evening with heels burning it was particularly enjoyable to open one of the better bottles from the small but well chosen list and share a glass with the waiting staff. The opportunity to be suggestive with the young women who waited for money and had no love of food or service or to engage in cod philosophy with the odd well educated and interesting young man that fell into his temporary employ seldom passed Marcus by. The beautiful and the intelligent amongst these young people helped Marcus to forget much.
He would usually leave around eleven during the week or approaching one in the morning at the weekend. In the warm summer months he would often walk through the pleasantly safe streets of town stopping at the steps of the cathedral to sit and listen to the buskers who entertained groups of scruffily loitering foreign language students who stayed out making the most of warm nights close in character to those they would experience at home. On nights like these Marcus felt most alone, alienated by age he could only gain comfort from the repetitiveness of his isolation. The cathedral precinct was broad and surrounded by stone and the brick rented homes of those who hoped for secure tenure. Nearby Sharon would be asleep or lying in bed worrying about monetary problems that existed but which she habitually avoided. Although Marcus maintained his belief in eventual success, if not with the restaurant with some other endeavour she was of the opinion that bankruptcy, her many affairs and an essentially dysfunctional family were not the foundations on which happiness was built.
Marcus gazed out across the grass and through the medieval stone tracery and asked what would become of him if he kept up this routine. Avoiding home and pursuing a fantasy for the last twelve nights he’d waited until he was sure everyone had gone home or at least the timbre of approaching footsteps indicated that he would have sufficient warning of potential discovery before he vaulted the fence. The fence was black with a patina underpinned by decades of layered paint and it separated the secular streets from the locked cathedral garden. Behind the garden lay another fence and two rows of houses large and small, timeless in their protective cocoon. Crossing over yesterday at a little after twelve, close to an adjoining wall in the shadows his ankle had been scored by many jagged thorns of a rose bush. Tonight the scabs were tight, stretching the connected skin and each movement of his foot caused him to wince.
The little restaurant business that Marcus ran with his wife Sharon had a small but loyal band of regulars and a steady stream of tourists in the summer but its heyday had passed and despite some good reviews and fabulous evenings in earlier years its lifecycle had moved into its period of decline. Each week paying suppliers or creditors became a test of disingenuous virtuosity, missing a phone call to avoid a lie, persuading customers to pay in cash, giving chefs post dated cheques. Marcus was well aware that they were living on borrowed time but would still be generous with portions or a small whiskey at the end of a successful evening for his favourites. Late in the evening with heels burning it was particularly enjoyable to open one of the better bottles from the small but well chosen list and share a glass with the waiting staff. The opportunity to be suggestive with the young women who waited for money and had no love of food or service or to engage in cod philosophy with the odd well educated and interesting young man that fell into his temporary employ seldom passed Marcus by. The beautiful and the intelligent amongst these young people helped Marcus to forget much.
He would usually leave around eleven during the week or approaching one in the morning at the weekend. In the warm summer months he would often walk through the pleasantly safe streets of town stopping at the steps of the cathedral to sit and listen to the buskers who entertained groups of scruffily loitering foreign language students who stayed out making the most of warm nights close in character to those they would experience at home. On nights like these Marcus felt most alone, alienated by age he could only gain comfort from the repetitiveness of his isolation. The cathedral precinct was broad and surrounded by stone and the brick rented homes of those who hoped for secure tenure. Nearby Sharon would be asleep or lying in bed worrying about monetary problems that existed but which she habitually avoided. Although Marcus maintained his belief in eventual success, if not with the restaurant with some other endeavour she was of the opinion that bankruptcy, her many affairs and an essentially dysfunctional family were not the foundations on which happiness was built.
Marcus gazed out across the grass and through the medieval stone tracery and asked what would become of him if he kept up this routine. Avoiding home and pursuing a fantasy for the last twelve nights he’d waited until he was sure everyone had gone home or at least the timbre of approaching footsteps indicated that he would have sufficient warning of potential discovery before he vaulted the fence. The fence was black with a patina underpinned by decades of layered paint and it separated the secular streets from the locked cathedral garden. Behind the garden lay another fence and two rows of houses large and small, timeless in their protective cocoon. Crossing over yesterday at a little after twelve, close to an adjoining wall in the shadows his ankle had been scored by many jagged thorns of a rose bush. Tonight the scabs were tight, stretching the connected skin and each movement of his foot caused him to wince.
Sunday 28 November 2010
Winter's Arrival
Beauty speaks for itself and it is hard to define what it is in words. So it's best I let it do its own talking.Winter's arrival on the 25th November has been a somewhat definite affair in Kirby Underdale. These pictures are quite representative of its seemingly positive statement of intent. The forecast is for more snow over the next few days. Overnight temperatures are down to double figures or thereabouts. And my love of Jaguar cars has once again bitten me hard. Big engined rear wheel drive is pretty much useless in these conditions.
The window behind the trees is where I mostly write and Cassie is my walking companion.
Tuesday 23 November 2010
A measure of my capacity to love
To impose order on the arrhythmic tick
Of our expanding metal
Or for threes and fours to fit the slick
World view you profess,
We have kindled, I have burnt much away,
Embers in the stove
Remain but order is not the order of the day.
I take pleasure if it comes in the night:
The singing edge
Of my hearing, metallic methane light
Playing in the dark,
Retinal wisps skipping at will while I listen
To strangled breath,
Until day comes and drowns the kitten.
I do love you though you are not mine
And I am not yours.
While you sleep, work or not, bring wine
Lilies, anxious fires or pets
I slip into something which may coincide
With your choosing,
Unsure of the fit and what it will hide.
Of our expanding metal
Or for threes and fours to fit the slick
World view you profess,
We have kindled, I have burnt much away,
Embers in the stove
Remain but order is not the order of the day.
I take pleasure if it comes in the night:
The singing edge
Of my hearing, metallic methane light
Playing in the dark,
Retinal wisps skipping at will while I listen
To strangled breath,
Until day comes and drowns the kitten.
I do love you though you are not mine
And I am not yours.
While you sleep, work or not, bring wine
Lilies, anxious fires or pets
I slip into something which may coincide
With your choosing,
Unsure of the fit and what it will hide.
Friday 12 November 2010
Valentine's Meal
I have this brooding irritation.
Gut deep, it manifests as acid
That follows cold crawls of sweat,
Evidencing you under my skin.
Cowardly indefinite I decline
Valediction and circle you,
Elliptically erratic like dust -
I book a table despite me.
The journey allows us to vent,
For me to agree to drive home.
You'll have wine and cognac
I'll keep to a cliched whine.
Before we pick at the meagre
Degust of an oversold kitchen,
We amuse our mouths with bitterness
Exchanged like saliva or cum.
We spit olive stones into fingers
And order our parable, chosen
For morally bankrupt times:
Faux, pre-prepared and indulgent,
Over sauced, over seasoned and dull,
We eat and become under whelmed.
All the while all alone and encircling
Each other’s disappointments again.
Easy pickings for old crows
Covertly re-asserting their nests.
Gut deep, it manifests as acid
That follows cold crawls of sweat,
Evidencing you under my skin.
Cowardly indefinite I decline
Valediction and circle you,
Elliptically erratic like dust -
I book a table despite me.
The journey allows us to vent,
For me to agree to drive home.
You'll have wine and cognac
I'll keep to a cliched whine.
Before we pick at the meagre
Degust of an oversold kitchen,
We amuse our mouths with bitterness
Exchanged like saliva or cum.
We spit olive stones into fingers
And order our parable, chosen
For morally bankrupt times:
Faux, pre-prepared and indulgent,
Over sauced, over seasoned and dull,
We eat and become under whelmed.
All the while all alone and encircling
Each other’s disappointments again.
Easy pickings for old crows
Covertly re-asserting their nests.
Tuesday 2 November 2010
I Covet Perfection in all Its Forms
I hear loneliness when she saunters by
Or she’s blown with a mute’s brittle loss
Senescing gold colours autumn lets fly
Her beauty, wrought in naked perfection.
I covet perfection's myriad forms
The arc of a waist, the crossing
Of limbs athletically honed, but born
Into degeneracy I am flawed.
What questions define my purpose as man?
Those quiet Godlike ones haunting the night,
Silken spectres of a dismal lover’s hands
Or those that probe desired retribution?
These contradictions fill my heart at rest
Attenuate my world, provide respite.
And so diminished, plucked but unstressed
I am left unresolved, a hanging chord.
Where is hope when sensibility dies?
I’d rather longing than stabilised lies.
Or she’s blown with a mute’s brittle loss
Senescing gold colours autumn lets fly
Her beauty, wrought in naked perfection.
I covet perfection's myriad forms
The arc of a waist, the crossing
Of limbs athletically honed, but born
Into degeneracy I am flawed.
What questions define my purpose as man?
Those quiet Godlike ones haunting the night,
Silken spectres of a dismal lover’s hands
Or those that probe desired retribution?
These contradictions fill my heart at rest
Attenuate my world, provide respite.
And so diminished, plucked but unstressed
I am left unresolved, a hanging chord.
Where is hope when sensibility dies?
I’d rather longing than stabilised lies.
Sunday 31 October 2010
My beautiful home
I thought that it would be good to share some pictures of the beautiful part of the world where I am lucky to live.
Kirby Underdale is in East Yorkshire, about 15 miles east of York on the edge of the Yorkshire Wolds. It’s an estate village, owned by Lord Halifax Estates. Mainly 19th century build there is plenty of evidence of the area being occupied for up to 5,000 years.
It is truly a fabulous place to be. I hope someone enjoys the pics.
Kirby Underdale is in East Yorkshire, about 15 miles east of York on the edge of the Yorkshire Wolds. It’s an estate village, owned by Lord Halifax Estates. Mainly 19th century build there is plenty of evidence of the area being occupied for up to 5,000 years.
It is truly a fabulous place to be. I hope someone enjoys the pics.
Saturday 30 October 2010
Another sombre moment before the door
Another sombre moment before the door.
It opens to expectation. My footsteps
Accompanied by a murmured discontent
Arc toward the dock. Shuttering applause
Flutters in the sterile room, butterflies
Of fear greet my centring breaths before
The defence begins. I look up to expectation
I see gratitude, my oratory bringing joy.
Poverty blighted these lives and yet my deeds
Simple and subtly enacted give them peace.
To regain my composure I reject my weakness,
A truthful voice contains more than is desired,
Give them the certain and logically correct
Their loyal reason will ensure the rest. Each
Impassioned belligerence, spittled from my lips
Each sweep of an arm, salutes and beatifies me,
Justifies our enemies rooted out, made to pay.
No judgement is being passed. Friends don’t.
We were one in our endeavours, my people
And me. The questions asked are uninspired,
Combat for lawyers, weak moneyed men, liars
Let them save a nation, they espouse cliché,
Protecting with dull and uninventive wits.
I am angry with their ingratitude. Shits!
And disrespectful ones at that, tire me.
I refused council, in recess time is mine.
Soon judgement will be handed down. They will
Not decide. I will have my victory tonight.
30th October 2010.
It opens to expectation. My footsteps
Accompanied by a murmured discontent
Arc toward the dock. Shuttering applause
Flutters in the sterile room, butterflies
Of fear greet my centring breaths before
The defence begins. I look up to expectation
I see gratitude, my oratory bringing joy.
Poverty blighted these lives and yet my deeds
Simple and subtly enacted give them peace.
To regain my composure I reject my weakness,
A truthful voice contains more than is desired,
Give them the certain and logically correct
Their loyal reason will ensure the rest. Each
Impassioned belligerence, spittled from my lips
Each sweep of an arm, salutes and beatifies me,
Justifies our enemies rooted out, made to pay.
No judgement is being passed. Friends don’t.
We were one in our endeavours, my people
And me. The questions asked are uninspired,
Combat for lawyers, weak moneyed men, liars
Let them save a nation, they espouse cliché,
Protecting with dull and uninventive wits.
I am angry with their ingratitude. Shits!
And disrespectful ones at that, tire me.
I refused council, in recess time is mine.
Soon judgement will be handed down. They will
Not decide. I will have my victory tonight.
30th October 2010.
Thursday 28 October 2010
First Class
Alone yet juxtaposed
We triptych, around a
Table of four, whisper
Through an architecture,
Exchanging services,
Our impassively drawn
Faces tuned to deny
Unwarranted contact,
Rushing to commerce with
Other souls waiting while
We are hurled to temporary
Meaning, minuted life.
Amended 30th October 2010
We triptych, around a
Table of four, whisper
Through an architecture,
Exchanging services,
Our impassively drawn
Faces tuned to deny
Unwarranted contact,
Rushing to commerce with
Other souls waiting while
We are hurled to temporary
Meaning, minuted life.
Amended 30th October 2010
Much, much, more
There have been moments in N’s career when rewards have come too easy. The discovery that often only a working knowledge of an organisation’s failings is required in order to make personal progress through its ranks has however made life less than satisfactory. It wasn’t always so. Most companies require commitment but are easily deluded. N learnt quickly how little work people actually do, and beneficial work is very rare; he knew the shocking lie that capitalism is efficient. It’s efficient at making sure capital resources are allocated efficiently, it’s that banal, but an effective use of people? A lifetime of experience told him that less is much much more.
N was thirty two years old and therefore a late developer when his enthusiasm for the task got him noticed, ideas and projects that he put forward coincided with the company’s zeitgeist, ephemeral and glib though it was. Before long he was putting in the required hours to be known as one of the ones to watch though those that conferred privileges also kept him at arm’s length. And so it went for a few years but the projects N submitted or was allocated rarely came to anything. N probably saw through the implementation of one idea across three areas of the business as he moved from role to role but as he did so he was getting further and further from what he saw as what mattered, the company’s customers and the employees who looked after them.
Like most people he came across N had stumbled into the industry. Some colleagues found railways fascinating but strangely they were derided within the company as much trainspotters are by the general public and jokers. N didn’t find railways fascinating although he had a quiet fascination for timetablers and engineers but like he wasn’t accepted by the Directors and most of the other senior managers he knew he wasn’t part of the company’s true meritocracy either. For a time he was a conundrum, recognised by many on the payroll of three thousand his name was known to pretty much all of them. Some admired his vivacity, some were quizzical about his success, and others were downright hostile implying with their ironic greetings and unreturned voicemails that they simply didn’t value his contribution and couldn’t work out why the company did either.
This was all fourteen years ago now. The senior team changed, new faces without any railway background came in and set about making things the same with an evangelical fervour. For a few months N almost pulled off the same trick but again these new managers were a different breed. The end was swift, mostly engineered by N himself he knew that clever those these new guys were they were also stupid. N believed organisational focus a fabulous concept it allowed him to operate in the Director’s peripheral vision and create a copper bottomed case for unfair dismissal. A cheque followed a few months’ gardening leave and he was free of economic ties but also free of means.
N was thirty two years old and therefore a late developer when his enthusiasm for the task got him noticed, ideas and projects that he put forward coincided with the company’s zeitgeist, ephemeral and glib though it was. Before long he was putting in the required hours to be known as one of the ones to watch though those that conferred privileges also kept him at arm’s length. And so it went for a few years but the projects N submitted or was allocated rarely came to anything. N probably saw through the implementation of one idea across three areas of the business as he moved from role to role but as he did so he was getting further and further from what he saw as what mattered, the company’s customers and the employees who looked after them.
Like most people he came across N had stumbled into the industry. Some colleagues found railways fascinating but strangely they were derided within the company as much trainspotters are by the general public and jokers. N didn’t find railways fascinating although he had a quiet fascination for timetablers and engineers but like he wasn’t accepted by the Directors and most of the other senior managers he knew he wasn’t part of the company’s true meritocracy either. For a time he was a conundrum, recognised by many on the payroll of three thousand his name was known to pretty much all of them. Some admired his vivacity, some were quizzical about his success, and others were downright hostile implying with their ironic greetings and unreturned voicemails that they simply didn’t value his contribution and couldn’t work out why the company did either.
This was all fourteen years ago now. The senior team changed, new faces without any railway background came in and set about making things the same with an evangelical fervour. For a few months N almost pulled off the same trick but again these new managers were a different breed. The end was swift, mostly engineered by N himself he knew that clever those these new guys were they were also stupid. N believed organisational focus a fabulous concept it allowed him to operate in the Director’s peripheral vision and create a copper bottomed case for unfair dismissal. A cheque followed a few months’ gardening leave and he was free of economic ties but also free of means.
Thursday 21 October 2010
Half Truths
I create a dream each day. The draw of a wood fire is its breath, a fast machine ride therapy for a jumped up pantry boy. In this world of opinions and momentum there is no certain way. Man is not master of the forces he unleashes woman neither; she is as bored with her materialism as a popular actor with a new toy on his fiftieth birthday. No more toys for God’s sake. Intelligent design could not have got us here surely? The dream is a pathway of justification through each highly paid day’s fraud that I commit. I have what to most would be a perfect life. I am a bee with a surfeit of nectar, a sugar rushed lazy of a man toying with my rudder. Toying too much with it, bloody thing and the Internet, how the hell am I supposed to make sense of my life with so much distraction?
Still I have a girl with a beautiful haircut and a cosmetically unchallenged body to contend with. Her enthusiasm is my noire, her enthusiasm for meals, my generosity and me, I am a waning moon and on the cusp of being alone, she’ll deny all this but as I crouch over her and admire her beauty in silence I can’t help but smile at the stupidity of youth when it encounters wealth. My crotch aches and for a moment I consider turning her to one side, she asked me in the night as she curled into me if I would leave her, in my half waken humour I comforted her with ‘of course not, I couldn't be bothered', now I can’t but soon self protection will mean I must.
I ought to be friends with my family. I have left them scattered across the country. My mother is alive and I’ve tried to keep in touch with her, she visits but the coordination is fraught. She’ll want a lengthy visit so as to get best value from her discounted fare; I have to get whichever unsuitable companion is in my life out of the way for a day or two. I try not to make it any more than that; I think I’m an unfortunate son for a widow to suffer. She arrives at ten and Jana leaves at nine, off to a weekend field trip. It is five now. I have to write a paper for a company chairman, give her what she wants and condemn a few more workers to having to think about their future. It is as pointless to import Bordeaux during prohibition as to fight this particular firebird with words. To be caught in the squall of her capitalism would be the death of me no doubt, I am lucky to ride its up draught for while yet. Do I wish that I was still married? On days like these the comfort of being known to each other and corralled by vows and legal obligations makes visiting matriarchy more comfortable. She’s not daft my mother and she knows that I have lovers, and she knows their absence when she visits is a portent of a dark future for me. But I couldn’t stand the way my wife would make sure I sent cards and gifts, made me out to be something I am not. I am not friends with my family because after I insisted on keeping the flat and left her the country house and returned to my uncommunicative ways they realised she was the one who they’d been enjoying and I was the same introspective dreamer I’d always been.
I’ll never break with tradition and will keep melodies at the centre of the life I compose. Though I harbour visions of a self-less revolutionary fervour I am no doubt a conservative and reticent man.
Out of bed and through to my office. Coffee, smoke and toast; butter and yeast extract, butter and honey, one slice of each. I précis my thoughts into a scribbled map and gradually collate them into an idea and then I start to write. Words tumble out of my bleary head and struggle through the dehydration of a cask strength Rosebank, as old as my daughter. I always tell myself that each paper I write is a work of art. I re-present the truth but as they wish it to be see. I calculate each margin and ratio, I summarise the spreadsheet model that I made last week between fucking and porn and being frustrated. True I did re-learn the Hotel California guitar solo again after a twenty year hiatus. After a couple of hours I have something half-baked which wouldn’t stand up to so much scrutiny. I read it through, correct some grammar and add a couple tables and graphs for effect. It will come back with a mixture of spite and admonishment for my lack of progress. Then I’ll turn it round, I always do. The Chairman is my judge and jury but sometimes not that bright. I am aware of my hubris. I just don’t care. I press send.
Time to wake up Jana. I am often ashamed of my never ceasing lust for her. She must be sore to distraction sometimes. I know she'd be better off without me. I shall make her a coffee and let her decide about fucking, the field trip and my mother. If she decides wrongly I shall be anxious and hateful to her. My inherent deterrent is not an attractive side to me and it will probably be a main reason why she will leave at nine and one day for good. I won't change though, I decided not to, a long time ago.
Still I have a girl with a beautiful haircut and a cosmetically unchallenged body to contend with. Her enthusiasm is my noire, her enthusiasm for meals, my generosity and me, I am a waning moon and on the cusp of being alone, she’ll deny all this but as I crouch over her and admire her beauty in silence I can’t help but smile at the stupidity of youth when it encounters wealth. My crotch aches and for a moment I consider turning her to one side, she asked me in the night as she curled into me if I would leave her, in my half waken humour I comforted her with ‘of course not, I couldn't be bothered', now I can’t but soon self protection will mean I must.
I ought to be friends with my family. I have left them scattered across the country. My mother is alive and I’ve tried to keep in touch with her, she visits but the coordination is fraught. She’ll want a lengthy visit so as to get best value from her discounted fare; I have to get whichever unsuitable companion is in my life out of the way for a day or two. I try not to make it any more than that; I think I’m an unfortunate son for a widow to suffer. She arrives at ten and Jana leaves at nine, off to a weekend field trip. It is five now. I have to write a paper for a company chairman, give her what she wants and condemn a few more workers to having to think about their future. It is as pointless to import Bordeaux during prohibition as to fight this particular firebird with words. To be caught in the squall of her capitalism would be the death of me no doubt, I am lucky to ride its up draught for while yet. Do I wish that I was still married? On days like these the comfort of being known to each other and corralled by vows and legal obligations makes visiting matriarchy more comfortable. She’s not daft my mother and she knows that I have lovers, and she knows their absence when she visits is a portent of a dark future for me. But I couldn’t stand the way my wife would make sure I sent cards and gifts, made me out to be something I am not. I am not friends with my family because after I insisted on keeping the flat and left her the country house and returned to my uncommunicative ways they realised she was the one who they’d been enjoying and I was the same introspective dreamer I’d always been.
I’ll never break with tradition and will keep melodies at the centre of the life I compose. Though I harbour visions of a self-less revolutionary fervour I am no doubt a conservative and reticent man.
Out of bed and through to my office. Coffee, smoke and toast; butter and yeast extract, butter and honey, one slice of each. I précis my thoughts into a scribbled map and gradually collate them into an idea and then I start to write. Words tumble out of my bleary head and struggle through the dehydration of a cask strength Rosebank, as old as my daughter. I always tell myself that each paper I write is a work of art. I re-present the truth but as they wish it to be see. I calculate each margin and ratio, I summarise the spreadsheet model that I made last week between fucking and porn and being frustrated. True I did re-learn the Hotel California guitar solo again after a twenty year hiatus. After a couple of hours I have something half-baked which wouldn’t stand up to so much scrutiny. I read it through, correct some grammar and add a couple tables and graphs for effect. It will come back with a mixture of spite and admonishment for my lack of progress. Then I’ll turn it round, I always do. The Chairman is my judge and jury but sometimes not that bright. I am aware of my hubris. I just don’t care. I press send.
Time to wake up Jana. I am often ashamed of my never ceasing lust for her. She must be sore to distraction sometimes. I know she'd be better off without me. I shall make her a coffee and let her decide about fucking, the field trip and my mother. If she decides wrongly I shall be anxious and hateful to her. My inherent deterrent is not an attractive side to me and it will probably be a main reason why she will leave at nine and one day for good. I won't change though, I decided not to, a long time ago.
Thursday 14 October 2010
My wife was completely disinterested in the Chilean Miners' rescue! I found it moving, she was unmoved.
I have to admit to a experiencing a strange sensation when seeing so many others from around the world expressing their happiness in public on the BBC website.
I have a friend who recently won an award and when it was reported in the local newspaper some people wrote in to make strangely incorrect and disrespectful remarks. The friend felt that people who had nothing better to do than to go online and complain were donkeys (my word not hers) and to paraphrase something very old: 'if you are kicked in the head by a donkey........'.
So, although it was a positive emotion that I expressed am I just a donkey too? Or a sheep following the flock? When Diana POW died I was appalled by the public hysteria and took no part in any public display of grief, although I did moan about it down the pub sometimes.
I think my wife's disinterest shines an interesting light on me and I find it's illumination not wholly flattering. My sentiment was good and it was a joyous rescue so why not take part in it's celebration? And after all not many people look at my blog (possibly one!) so it was hardly a narcissistic post but I guess that is my fear.
What an introspective man I can be.
I have to admit to a experiencing a strange sensation when seeing so many others from around the world expressing their happiness in public on the BBC website.
I have a friend who recently won an award and when it was reported in the local newspaper some people wrote in to make strangely incorrect and disrespectful remarks. The friend felt that people who had nothing better to do than to go online and complain were donkeys (my word not hers) and to paraphrase something very old: 'if you are kicked in the head by a donkey........'.
So, although it was a positive emotion that I expressed am I just a donkey too? Or a sheep following the flock? When Diana POW died I was appalled by the public hysteria and took no part in any public display of grief, although I did moan about it down the pub sometimes.
I think my wife's disinterest shines an interesting light on me and I find it's illumination not wholly flattering. My sentiment was good and it was a joyous rescue so why not take part in it's celebration? And after all not many people look at my blog (possibly one!) so it was hardly a narcissistic post but I guess that is my fear.
What an introspective man I can be.
Wednesday 13 October 2010
Success is Beautiful
Seven hundred metres doesn't seem such a great distance when it is out of context, or the context is benign, but even a fraction of it can separate life from oblivion.
I can walk seven hundred metres and enjoy every moment, though if time is limited and the walk is part of a necessary journey enjoyment is less likely. It can be the setting out, the existential joy of motion, weather or setting, or simply what is at the end of the journey that matters. Sometimes seven hundred metres is not enough and a desire to go further and then further still can only be satisfied by getting away.
Watching moving pictures of the Chilean miners being brought to the surface is deeply emotional. To them during their incarceration every metre must have moved through many different psychological states. The depth of the rock summed across the earth's surface its mass bearing down, the technical challenge it represented, the barrier to love and loved ones, for the deceivers a protection against the inevitable consequences of discovery bought about by the all the remote attention they and their lives have received. Being trapped has many degrees of separation not just the physical. Knowing freedom can be derived from only one.
It is affirming to see the impact of the successful rescue on the faces of the rescued, the rescuers and most of all the families. If ever it can be doubted that we are born to love then these pictures are the antidote. So many people have been lost in similar circumstances over the course of human existence that it would be easier for us as a race to dismiss another group of trapped miners as a common place and not worth the allocation of scarce resources. Perhaps some did this time and thought it too difficult or maybe they just didn't care enough. But some made the effort, skillfully meticulous and diligent they have achieved a tremendous victory for humanity.
The rescue is ongoing. I am nervous that it may falter at some point. I think of others in similar situations who didn't make it, the Russian sailors on the Kursk, the many in the World Trade Centre, let us hope that this mission is successfully completed and let us give thanks to humanity for having the capacity to love so effectively.
I can walk seven hundred metres and enjoy every moment, though if time is limited and the walk is part of a necessary journey enjoyment is less likely. It can be the setting out, the existential joy of motion, weather or setting, or simply what is at the end of the journey that matters. Sometimes seven hundred metres is not enough and a desire to go further and then further still can only be satisfied by getting away.
Watching moving pictures of the Chilean miners being brought to the surface is deeply emotional. To them during their incarceration every metre must have moved through many different psychological states. The depth of the rock summed across the earth's surface its mass bearing down, the technical challenge it represented, the barrier to love and loved ones, for the deceivers a protection against the inevitable consequences of discovery bought about by the all the remote attention they and their lives have received. Being trapped has many degrees of separation not just the physical. Knowing freedom can be derived from only one.
It is affirming to see the impact of the successful rescue on the faces of the rescued, the rescuers and most of all the families. If ever it can be doubted that we are born to love then these pictures are the antidote. So many people have been lost in similar circumstances over the course of human existence that it would be easier for us as a race to dismiss another group of trapped miners as a common place and not worth the allocation of scarce resources. Perhaps some did this time and thought it too difficult or maybe they just didn't care enough. But some made the effort, skillfully meticulous and diligent they have achieved a tremendous victory for humanity.
The rescue is ongoing. I am nervous that it may falter at some point. I think of others in similar situations who didn't make it, the Russian sailors on the Kursk, the many in the World Trade Centre, let us hope that this mission is successfully completed and let us give thanks to humanity for having the capacity to love so effectively.
Friday 8 October 2010
Something New
I have time and yet my time elapses leaving me frustrated and disillusioned. Each day I age and I am aware of an accelerating sense of purposelessness, my sight is increasingly ineffectual in dim light and likewise my desire for life diminishes as the light of youth fades.
My daughter is a celebrity and I am not. She has a circle of self-defined fabulous friends and I have long walks alone with my dog. We rarely talk and when we do it is over the phone, she will set down the handset and use hands-free; we will converse about nothing, our words for all in her proximity to hear. The dog enjoys being out and about, when we are out she can run and run but when we return she will lay forlorn and wait for my wife to return. I am sure she lives for her predisposition to flush out game and my wife’s affections. All else is disappointment.
I live on the side of a hill and today the hill fog matches the colour of the walls of my bedroom. It is silent except for the ringing in my ears and a stiff wind that is shaking the trees, but only a fraction of the changing air pressure or the movement of the branches gets through my windows. I have some paid work to do but it is dull and I cannot help but put it off. There is wood to chop, a house to clean, some food to prepare. I have a friend to ring another to see. Tonight I plan to go to see people in a village pub near where I used to live, but I may not. I used to go frequently, local and accessible, although I was an outsider, and a socially inarticulate one at that, I got by. Sometimes I felt one of them, generally middle aged like myself or a little older.
At 5pm my daughter’s latest venture is on the second channel. It’s an hour or two away yet but I have yet to work out what I shall find as an excuse for not watching. Still, hosting a 5pm teen show should hopefully mean that she will be mostly covered up. Made me laugh yesterday to see a female journalist from the Daily Mail bemoaning a bar where the on-duty all-girl waiting staff was dressed not so much differently from off-duty porn stars. At 11pm my daughter will be making gags about porn and flirting outrageously with her guests. My daughter is on the Daily Mail’s hit list of inappropriate young women. Little do they know that their ageing proprietor has been sleeping with my daughter’s ‘second best friend’ on and off for a while now; maybe the journalist was disappointed with her own ability to reach the parts of the organisation that others could fellate so easily.
I could pose a few questions for the journalist. What is the good of drinking poison in the hope that revenge will be served upon those who’ve trespassed against us? Do I give something of value to myself when I am bitter about my failures? Why do I drink my own vitriolic poison and hope for the best? I don’t think she’ll get it though. Apparently during a photo opportunity outside the bar one of a passing group of lads shouted she should get her tits out and then had voluntarily retracted after noticing she didn’t have any. Her point was that nothing had moved on and that feminism had seemingly lost ground again to male chauvinism. And where’s the economic imperative in that love?
My daughter is a celebrity and I am not. She has a circle of self-defined fabulous friends and I have long walks alone with my dog. We rarely talk and when we do it is over the phone, she will set down the handset and use hands-free; we will converse about nothing, our words for all in her proximity to hear. The dog enjoys being out and about, when we are out she can run and run but when we return she will lay forlorn and wait for my wife to return. I am sure she lives for her predisposition to flush out game and my wife’s affections. All else is disappointment.
I live on the side of a hill and today the hill fog matches the colour of the walls of my bedroom. It is silent except for the ringing in my ears and a stiff wind that is shaking the trees, but only a fraction of the changing air pressure or the movement of the branches gets through my windows. I have some paid work to do but it is dull and I cannot help but put it off. There is wood to chop, a house to clean, some food to prepare. I have a friend to ring another to see. Tonight I plan to go to see people in a village pub near where I used to live, but I may not. I used to go frequently, local and accessible, although I was an outsider, and a socially inarticulate one at that, I got by. Sometimes I felt one of them, generally middle aged like myself or a little older.
At 5pm my daughter’s latest venture is on the second channel. It’s an hour or two away yet but I have yet to work out what I shall find as an excuse for not watching. Still, hosting a 5pm teen show should hopefully mean that she will be mostly covered up. Made me laugh yesterday to see a female journalist from the Daily Mail bemoaning a bar where the on-duty all-girl waiting staff was dressed not so much differently from off-duty porn stars. At 11pm my daughter will be making gags about porn and flirting outrageously with her guests. My daughter is on the Daily Mail’s hit list of inappropriate young women. Little do they know that their ageing proprietor has been sleeping with my daughter’s ‘second best friend’ on and off for a while now; maybe the journalist was disappointed with her own ability to reach the parts of the organisation that others could fellate so easily.
I could pose a few questions for the journalist. What is the good of drinking poison in the hope that revenge will be served upon those who’ve trespassed against us? Do I give something of value to myself when I am bitter about my failures? Why do I drink my own vitriolic poison and hope for the best? I don’t think she’ll get it though. Apparently during a photo opportunity outside the bar one of a passing group of lads shouted she should get her tits out and then had voluntarily retracted after noticing she didn’t have any. Her point was that nothing had moved on and that feminism had seemingly lost ground again to male chauvinism. And where’s the economic imperative in that love?
Thursday 1 July 2010
I wish it were so
Admonished and sullen she sits to write but cannot get her father out of her mind. He is contradictory despite his protestations, hypocritical and still prone to behave as he did when she was very young. Mixing up sentences to make her laugh, creating sentences planned to amuse from a combination of splintered words.
She pushes around her desk the document she has to reword. It's clarity and structure dismantled by the garishly tracked changes imposed upon it. The paper was a chore from the very beginning, a proposal for change that contained nothing but old ideas; new ideas being excluded from her brief as everything had to be evidenced as achievable. I am beautiful she momentarily dreams, an involuntary sweep of interwoven self love and the physical discomfort borne of long hours typing pushes her back into her reclining desk chair, she stretches and rotates her shoulders, tenses her calf muscles with her legs lengthened and her thigh muscles taut and pressed together. The sexual surge only causing to heighten the absurdity of her office life. God I'd like to do something about this feeling she knowingly considers, unspoken even within her unconscious; but felt nonetheless.
The absurdity of her days is suddenly no longer a worry. A memory of her father's easy way of reducing her to giggles causes her tension to dissipate. The paper can wait she thinks and so she picks up the phone and arranges to meet him.
She pushes around her desk the document she has to reword. It's clarity and structure dismantled by the garishly tracked changes imposed upon it. The paper was a chore from the very beginning, a proposal for change that contained nothing but old ideas; new ideas being excluded from her brief as everything had to be evidenced as achievable. I am beautiful she momentarily dreams, an involuntary sweep of interwoven self love and the physical discomfort borne of long hours typing pushes her back into her reclining desk chair, she stretches and rotates her shoulders, tenses her calf muscles with her legs lengthened and her thigh muscles taut and pressed together. The sexual surge only causing to heighten the absurdity of her office life. God I'd like to do something about this feeling she knowingly considers, unspoken even within her unconscious; but felt nonetheless.
The absurdity of her days is suddenly no longer a worry. A memory of her father's easy way of reducing her to giggles causes her tension to dissipate. The paper can wait she thinks and so she picks up the phone and arranges to meet him.
Friday 21 May 2010
Coalition
It is vital that the descent
is orderly. Meetings along
The way measured, decisions
Are required, treasons done
So as to maintain a unity
Of purpose and guile. Quiet
Consideration, lofty speech
And traded pledges redefine
Our landscape. I supported
The losing team. I disagree
With what we have done, we
Believe in analyses' soft lies.
is orderly. Meetings along
The way measured, decisions
Are required, treasons done
So as to maintain a unity
Of purpose and guile. Quiet
Consideration, lofty speech
And traded pledges redefine
Our landscape. I supported
The losing team. I disagree
With what we have done, we
Believe in analyses' soft lies.
Thursday 4 February 2010
After the Dream
He’s gone and now I can snuggle down into the bedclothes. Where he was they are damp and so I move away from that part of the bed and put a pillow between me and his vacant place. I love to lie still and quiet in the dark and remember things. It is so easy to slip back, my little gift, almost everyone I know struggles with memory as if those times are gone but to me they grow with my care. My mum struggled; she was a traditional and stolid woman. To her memories were bitter wells, where stories which didn’t need to be told again and again could be pulled up with real effort. Rarely profane she would sometimes say ‘what’s the point of polishing shit?’ I have somehow become the opposite. Even this apparent negative image of her flies me back to her love, her angry condemnation, her tidiness and the food she put on the table. Her parable was solitude and surrender and she truly believed it was the only way.
I’ve had a few husbands now. This one’s my third; he’s bright and wishful but not very practical. He’s made a bit of a hash of things the last few years and he frets about what will happen next. We had a good time while it lasted I tell him, it’ll come right again and if it doesn’t we’ll manage. I think back to when we met both us high on late flowering sexuality. It’s strange to get all the way through to one’s thirties and then discover what makes that connection. We exploded into our early relationship. Our hormone highs made for some pretty doubtful behaviour but we were hell bent on pleasure. I would still fuck about for a while; the power I felt at having more than one man want me was intoxicating, having more than one man on the same day and mixing them up inside me addictive, the immorality haunting. But within the harsh world of ‘I desire, I take, I consume’ there was also delicate beauty. This one was passionate about me and he used words to seduce me. He would drive me endlessly to places in my own back yard, places that I never knew existed and place my hand upon things so that I could sense their history and their place in the world. And physically he knew how to love me which others didn’t. I discovered that there is a big difference between pleasure that results from my insatiability and the pleasure that I gain from submission.
Today is a perfect day for me. No work, time with a friend. What I don’t want is to have a day of introspection, picking over the past. I want to be content and at peace. I know that I shall have to tread carefully, now there’s a recurring theme over the years, with my Dad I’d have to be very careful though he wasn’t there for long. First things first, some more sleep. That will get me through until mid morning and then I can get the dog out for a walk before heading into town and with some skill avoid the demons of despair that will corner me and pick a fight if I’m not careful. I afford myself a little smile of contentment as I fade back into my hidden mind.
I’ve had a few husbands now. This one’s my third; he’s bright and wishful but not very practical. He’s made a bit of a hash of things the last few years and he frets about what will happen next. We had a good time while it lasted I tell him, it’ll come right again and if it doesn’t we’ll manage. I think back to when we met both us high on late flowering sexuality. It’s strange to get all the way through to one’s thirties and then discover what makes that connection. We exploded into our early relationship. Our hormone highs made for some pretty doubtful behaviour but we were hell bent on pleasure. I would still fuck about for a while; the power I felt at having more than one man want me was intoxicating, having more than one man on the same day and mixing them up inside me addictive, the immorality haunting. But within the harsh world of ‘I desire, I take, I consume’ there was also delicate beauty. This one was passionate about me and he used words to seduce me. He would drive me endlessly to places in my own back yard, places that I never knew existed and place my hand upon things so that I could sense their history and their place in the world. And physically he knew how to love me which others didn’t. I discovered that there is a big difference between pleasure that results from my insatiability and the pleasure that I gain from submission.
Today is a perfect day for me. No work, time with a friend. What I don’t want is to have a day of introspection, picking over the past. I want to be content and at peace. I know that I shall have to tread carefully, now there’s a recurring theme over the years, with my Dad I’d have to be very careful though he wasn’t there for long. First things first, some more sleep. That will get me through until mid morning and then I can get the dog out for a walk before heading into town and with some skill avoid the demons of despair that will corner me and pick a fight if I’m not careful. I afford myself a little smile of contentment as I fade back into my hidden mind.
Wednesday 3 February 2010
Ending of a Dream
I was sleeping soundly until a vicious stab of memory propelled me upright, it rushed out of my dream, leaving my cold and sweating body, the irritation of its passing ending my unconsciousness, and the horror rushed out and into the dark.
As I woke and reality started to metamorphose out of my dream sensations manifested themselves. Deep arrhythmic breathing, impatient muscle tensions, a hand through my hair revealed it to me as gritty with sweat, the bedclothes as plastic wrapping binding my legs.
Something of the dream’s memory began to coalesce. I am driving a powerful locomotive out of a siding pulling many wagons behind fully laden. The engine screams and whines it thunders and hammers at my ears bones and flesh. I am vicariously powerful for a moment and feel pride. The power to move is mine and I am calling it to do my will. But at that moment a hideous crash against the windscreen twists my perception cruelly and pulls it hard by the roots. Blood and hair, a flash of a face smashed and horrified. And then I see you crushed too, lying on the road and what you are experiencing is a complete negative of my dream. Silent on lookers are shocked into stone, you have no way of preventing your death and your body is becoming immobilised as your breathing subsides.
I feel you stir in the bed next to me and for a moment you are even conscious enough to ask me what the matter is. I don’t answer and soon enough you slip back into wherever you are. I get out of bed and go downstairs to the kettle and while I wait for it to boil change into something dry. I think of my daughters sleeping who knows where; back at their mothers, with their boyfriends, or maybe out in the world. Wherever it is it is unknown to me. I sit down with tea and check four different message sources, nothing of importance or kindness is there. I nurse the smoky Lapsang mug.
Over by the kitchen table is a little desk, one which you use to organise us and make sure all of our papers are accessible. Folders colour coded, pens in trays, photographs of the kids. But because you are not here all day you do not know what the postman brings and you cannot bring order to what is hidden. There are things I that hide. Letters with a momentum that increases daily and soon their tide will be beyond the breakers, too high to resist. I go to the pocket of my coat and pull out one from yesterday. More than three years salary owed if I had a salary which I don’t, and that’s not all.
As I woke and reality started to metamorphose out of my dream sensations manifested themselves. Deep arrhythmic breathing, impatient muscle tensions, a hand through my hair revealed it to me as gritty with sweat, the bedclothes as plastic wrapping binding my legs.
Something of the dream’s memory began to coalesce. I am driving a powerful locomotive out of a siding pulling many wagons behind fully laden. The engine screams and whines it thunders and hammers at my ears bones and flesh. I am vicariously powerful for a moment and feel pride. The power to move is mine and I am calling it to do my will. But at that moment a hideous crash against the windscreen twists my perception cruelly and pulls it hard by the roots. Blood and hair, a flash of a face smashed and horrified. And then I see you crushed too, lying on the road and what you are experiencing is a complete negative of my dream. Silent on lookers are shocked into stone, you have no way of preventing your death and your body is becoming immobilised as your breathing subsides.
I feel you stir in the bed next to me and for a moment you are even conscious enough to ask me what the matter is. I don’t answer and soon enough you slip back into wherever you are. I get out of bed and go downstairs to the kettle and while I wait for it to boil change into something dry. I think of my daughters sleeping who knows where; back at their mothers, with their boyfriends, or maybe out in the world. Wherever it is it is unknown to me. I sit down with tea and check four different message sources, nothing of importance or kindness is there. I nurse the smoky Lapsang mug.
Over by the kitchen table is a little desk, one which you use to organise us and make sure all of our papers are accessible. Folders colour coded, pens in trays, photographs of the kids. But because you are not here all day you do not know what the postman brings and you cannot bring order to what is hidden. There are things I that hide. Letters with a momentum that increases daily and soon their tide will be beyond the breakers, too high to resist. I go to the pocket of my coat and pull out one from yesterday. More than three years salary owed if I had a salary which I don’t, and that’s not all.
Tuesday 2 February 2010
Caedmon's Hymn
The oldest poem in the English language is a song of creation, known as Caedmon's Hymn. The story goes that whenever Caedmon, a worldy established man and maybe a shepherd, was called upon to sing amongst his fellow men at drinking and feast gatherings, occasions of joy, he was overcome with shame and embarrassment. He knew no words or stories and felt ashamed as this was an essential part of belonging to his people and of sharing that joy. One night after leaving his fellow people in silence once again he retired and fell asleep. He was visited by an Angel who asked:
"Caedmon, sing me something?" and when he replied "I cannot and that is why I left, I do not know how to sing" the Angel replied "Nevertheless you must".
Caedmon asked what he should sing about and the Angel said: "sing to me of the first creation". And Caedmon sang in words that he had never heard:
Nu we sculon herigean, heofonrices weard,
meotodes meahte, ond his modgeþanc,
weorc wuldorfæder, swa he wundra gehwæs,
ece drihten, or onstealde.
He ærest sceop eorðan bearnum
heofon to hrofe, halig scyppend;
þa middangeard moncynnes weard,
ece drihten, æfter teode
firum foldan, frea ælmihtig.
The translation is unimportant to me. The writing is from Bede, a seventh century English monk from Whitby who may have borrowed at least elements of the story from extant folklore and embellished it with Caedmon's story, one of piety and godliness. I just love way it sounds, that is what matters to me. It is beautiful. Whether these words are of Caedmon, Bede, or God spoken through a man is less important than the narrative connection. This is part of who I am, I can feel it, believe it. I am not alone when I hear speak these words, I can understand.
I will try to find a way of posting what this sounds like when I read it aloud, until then here is a link, and many thanks to http://kayray.org/ for the LibriVox recording. She recites it beautifully.
"Caedmon, sing me something?" and when he replied "I cannot and that is why I left, I do not know how to sing" the Angel replied "Nevertheless you must".
Caedmon asked what he should sing about and the Angel said: "sing to me of the first creation". And Caedmon sang in words that he had never heard:
Nu we sculon herigean, heofonrices weard,
meotodes meahte, ond his modgeþanc,
weorc wuldorfæder, swa he wundra gehwæs,
ece drihten, or onstealde.
He ærest sceop eorðan bearnum
heofon to hrofe, halig scyppend;
þa middangeard moncynnes weard,
ece drihten, æfter teode
firum foldan, frea ælmihtig.
The translation is unimportant to me. The writing is from Bede, a seventh century English monk from Whitby who may have borrowed at least elements of the story from extant folklore and embellished it with Caedmon's story, one of piety and godliness. I just love way it sounds, that is what matters to me. It is beautiful. Whether these words are of Caedmon, Bede, or God spoken through a man is less important than the narrative connection. This is part of who I am, I can feel it, believe it. I am not alone when I hear speak these words, I can understand.
I will try to find a way of posting what this sounds like when I read it aloud, until then here is a link, and many thanks to http://kayray.org/ for the LibriVox recording. She recites it beautifully.
Monday 1 February 2010
Sleeping
Yesterday evening my life took a cruel downward spiral and as a result I slept outside last night in a darkened world of thoughts and unmet promises. No mysterious forces prevailed upon me, neither at midnight nor at any other time was I approached by spirits. I am now, I will say, well and truly rooted in the real world and well and truly alone.
My world now has renewed margins, margins defined with highly immediate clarity: anger, violence, disappointment and discontent. The parameters which identify me are creations of both me and my now estranged wife. This is not to say that we should both take all of the blame; much of our situation has been visited upon us by forces greater than the resistance that we could marshal. In the midst of life we are in debt, doubt, personal history and emotional tyranny. But I would accept that the greater majority of our situation is our own creation, one way or another.
I would ask that you don’t jump to conclusions about all of this, who does what and when is always mired in a distorted narrative, I am aware of that and would hope that any reader is too, I don’t have time for black and white and I don’t have much time anymore for people who cannot see the world as grey. This is incongruous and contradictory, believing in grey at face value should coincide with a peaceful characterisation, but it is a question of who we wish to be with in life. Black and white people have no heart, nor do they care for another’s heart. Is it a cliché to say one should only be with people who both set out to treat one’s heart with respect, to be benevolent and munificent with it? Well, if it is a cliché so be it. Black and white is no doubt good for business, science and many other disciplines; but for the heart it is a disaster.
It is enough to say for now, defensively, that it was not I that was violent. I did react strongly to what I perceived as poor treatment, but only with words, and the quality of the treatment that I received was certainly debatable. In doing so I unleashed a demonic tirade of hatred, fists, degradation and a shoe. I am pleased that it was only a shoe; a little earlier it had potentially been a dumbbell threatening to crash into my skull; but even a shoe, recently re-healed, was enough to leave a three inch cut in my scalp. It’s not deep, and doesn’t even feel sore today, so it clearly wasn’t such a big deal physically. The intent behind the battering it was meting out, mostly behind my unresisting but self-protecting arms, was lost in a lack of control and the result was an inability to exercise restraint. When it was finished I knew that I had to act. I packed some things, too much really because my car is now far too much like a poor episode of a bad sitcom, and just left. Bizarrely my wife went downstairs and watched television throughout my packing.
It wasn’t difficult to find somewhere safe to park and sleep. In my first hidden spot after an uncomfortable half hour a car came in to my English Nature-nature reserve bedding place and turns to face mine. The driver revs aggressively and flashes his lights. I think that this is an invitation, or a signal coded to identify a like minded soul. A dog-less dog walker lost in the night. I get up from the back seat and the driver takes off, clearly I wasn’t what they were after, although maybe it was my misted windows that led them on.
So I drove off and had a thought. I know a place where the road has recently been closed off creating a country cul de sac within a village. Down a little lane and away from the houses, far enough to be dark and quiet close enough to be safe and away from prying eyes. So that is where I slept. Not brilliantly, it was bit cold and for tonight I need to get a blanket or two, but I think that I got four or five hours. I had taken a flask of coffee with me, so I woke up to a little comfort and I had taken some shorts and a tea shirt or two. So at seven fifteen I was in the gym, worked out for an hour and a bit, used the showers to freshen up including shaving and then off to the supermarket to buy a few things for breakfast. And now like no doubt so many before me I am in a coffee shop, with a laptop, killing time with nowhere permanent to go. I have decisions to make, accommodation to find, a life to rebuild and a relationship to take apart with a woman who has well and truly lost it with me. If I am going to sleep in the car for a few days until I decide what to do I think I need a few hidden and safe places so that I can rotate them and not draw attention to myself. Whatever next I ask myself.
My world now has renewed margins, margins defined with highly immediate clarity: anger, violence, disappointment and discontent. The parameters which identify me are creations of both me and my now estranged wife. This is not to say that we should both take all of the blame; much of our situation has been visited upon us by forces greater than the resistance that we could marshal. In the midst of life we are in debt, doubt, personal history and emotional tyranny. But I would accept that the greater majority of our situation is our own creation, one way or another.
I would ask that you don’t jump to conclusions about all of this, who does what and when is always mired in a distorted narrative, I am aware of that and would hope that any reader is too, I don’t have time for black and white and I don’t have much time anymore for people who cannot see the world as grey. This is incongruous and contradictory, believing in grey at face value should coincide with a peaceful characterisation, but it is a question of who we wish to be with in life. Black and white people have no heart, nor do they care for another’s heart. Is it a cliché to say one should only be with people who both set out to treat one’s heart with respect, to be benevolent and munificent with it? Well, if it is a cliché so be it. Black and white is no doubt good for business, science and many other disciplines; but for the heart it is a disaster.
It is enough to say for now, defensively, that it was not I that was violent. I did react strongly to what I perceived as poor treatment, but only with words, and the quality of the treatment that I received was certainly debatable. In doing so I unleashed a demonic tirade of hatred, fists, degradation and a shoe. I am pleased that it was only a shoe; a little earlier it had potentially been a dumbbell threatening to crash into my skull; but even a shoe, recently re-healed, was enough to leave a three inch cut in my scalp. It’s not deep, and doesn’t even feel sore today, so it clearly wasn’t such a big deal physically. The intent behind the battering it was meting out, mostly behind my unresisting but self-protecting arms, was lost in a lack of control and the result was an inability to exercise restraint. When it was finished I knew that I had to act. I packed some things, too much really because my car is now far too much like a poor episode of a bad sitcom, and just left. Bizarrely my wife went downstairs and watched television throughout my packing.
It wasn’t difficult to find somewhere safe to park and sleep. In my first hidden spot after an uncomfortable half hour a car came in to my English Nature-nature reserve bedding place and turns to face mine. The driver revs aggressively and flashes his lights. I think that this is an invitation, or a signal coded to identify a like minded soul. A dog-less dog walker lost in the night. I get up from the back seat and the driver takes off, clearly I wasn’t what they were after, although maybe it was my misted windows that led them on.
So I drove off and had a thought. I know a place where the road has recently been closed off creating a country cul de sac within a village. Down a little lane and away from the houses, far enough to be dark and quiet close enough to be safe and away from prying eyes. So that is where I slept. Not brilliantly, it was bit cold and for tonight I need to get a blanket or two, but I think that I got four or five hours. I had taken a flask of coffee with me, so I woke up to a little comfort and I had taken some shorts and a tea shirt or two. So at seven fifteen I was in the gym, worked out for an hour and a bit, used the showers to freshen up including shaving and then off to the supermarket to buy a few things for breakfast. And now like no doubt so many before me I am in a coffee shop, with a laptop, killing time with nowhere permanent to go. I have decisions to make, accommodation to find, a life to rebuild and a relationship to take apart with a woman who has well and truly lost it with me. If I am going to sleep in the car for a few days until I decide what to do I think I need a few hidden and safe places so that I can rotate them and not draw attention to myself. Whatever next I ask myself.
Monday 25 January 2010
Haiku
I wrote this on a whim. Montaigne believed marriage to be a cage and I believe that all of us married know this idea. Some cages are traps, some give us voluntary captivity, some we are free to leave for a while and return, some we can bend the bars to fit if poorly made.I guess that the Haiku could be expanded in consecutive verses each in the 5/7/5 form. I have an idea to try that, to see if I can create a more complete perspective. This is too pessimistic.
Come to me my love
Within my cage my anger
Waits alone for you
Voyeur
“What if the door is locked?”
“And what if it’s not? Your constant pessimism is so wearing”. He scrapes at the ground with a twig, not purposefully but negatively wearing away at the earth, flicking stones away, digging in to root out a channel. “Why should everything be against us?”
“Well you just assumed that it’s alright, no one said that said we can”.
It is two hours since I was disturbed, forced to hide, but I’ve managed to remain unnoticed, I have learnt to do this.
Crouching, uncomfortable and wet, my calf muscles aching under the compression my posture is placing on them, my lower back is tight and painful. It has taken weeks for me to lose the urge to dampen my fingers with my tongue, a magnetic habit that I had acquired before adulthood, but the dirt ingrained in my fingers is drawing them toward my mouth. I perceive stress as dryness in my hands; even though I am no stranger to filth I feel dirt the same way. A dry branch has caught against my sleeve and if I move there will be a sure consequence, a snap, a cause so simple as to effect my discovery.
I cannot see them but their voices sound weak, I picture them emaciated, lank hair matted, with lice, like me. Both of them have the bitterness of strong people no longer able to be the source of their own determination colouring the timbre of their voices. I wonder if once they had all of their material lusts satiated, were considered beautiful among their peers. Beauty lost becomes a source of suffering; poor beauty becomes incarnate.
“Do you think that guy who use to own this place is around? I’ve heard that he’s still here somewhere.”
The question brings a light and casual laugh and he pauses before saying “You know, I think I wish he were, now.”
His sudden change in mood seems to give her confidence. “Me too, I’m sure we could all help each other. He knows every brook and gully”.
“Hey do you remember when you first bought me up here and we found him, meditating? We had that fabulous Lamb that you roasted and he had that crazy smoke.”
So I know them, God that’s disconcerting, I am frightened and hopeful. I don’t remember that time, but I do remember their voices now; I think that we were friends though I have my doubts the term is appropriate. I discovered this place much earlier than any of my temporary acolytes; I was seeking refuge, to recede from an incessant life but, weak, came to hope that strangers would arrive. They did of course pulled-in by the parties that I put on. They weren’t exactly wild but there was enough of everything to fill whatever short term emptiness arose. I was happy to fund it all.
Those who came were younger people predominately, some seeking to retain a carefree spirit in their hatch-battened corporate lives, some just hedonists, others thinking that this part of the world may hold a secret. I never held much truck with mysticism.
“Look it’s getting late, have you any idea where we are going or shall we pick our way back?” The frustration in her voice is rendering her hatefully.
“Does it matter? The time I mean? We’ll know exactly where we are in the morning, and then we can get to the cabin, make a fire, take a wash and have a good sleep. God, it’s only one night in the open, we know that we’re safe here; we could hear anyone coming for miles if that’s what’s worrying you.”
“So much for a fun time then”
She says this with such resignation, her broken heart had hoped for something on which to rest, a few days of visions, childlike, slowly entering her consciousness but car, bed and shower are strong forces.
Within the cage there is kindness
And other forces some unknown
I lean against an old wall waiting
With tricks to play wood on stone.
It’s a song that I wrote when people listened. I thought that they always would.
“Once these things mattered to you” he said.
She continues in her resigned mode, the same as contentment just moved along, same life, same actions, but a different tonal centre. It is now so dark that I cannot see a thing. She begins to hum the tune to my song. The compulsion to lick my fingers strengthens with the compulsion to show myself too. I am so frightened of being exposed I am held in stasis. As each desire grows the other keeps it firmly in check.
“They do matter. Still. Look, if we head back to car we should meet that trail, the one which leads up to the ridge. It’s a clear sky now, the moon should be up soon, we can hopefully see the copse and then make our way down to the hut. I want to do this, for you, for us. I wish he’d never sold it, especially to those two bores.
“Good girl, that’s the spirit. And if we can’t work it out from the ridge, we’ll head back to the car, sleep there overnight and find our way in the morning.”
He’s pleased, his enthusiasm is almost unbridled. I can hear him take hold of her, the whispered intimacies. They crunch away across the floor of leaves and rotting wood, back the way they came.
I wait for maybe five minutes so as to be sure that they have gone. Numb limbs, stiffened and sore it takes me a long time to make my body move freely again. The hut is only a few metres distant. I pick my way at ninety degrees to the path they took, up the hill and find a more comfortable place to watch and wait. I hope that they will find it again. I want to see who they are, see if I remember them.
I sold the hut because I didn’t want to be responsible. Loneliness is cause for despair though it is better than death and some lives are so deathly.
“And what if it’s not? Your constant pessimism is so wearing”. He scrapes at the ground with a twig, not purposefully but negatively wearing away at the earth, flicking stones away, digging in to root out a channel. “Why should everything be against us?”
“Well you just assumed that it’s alright, no one said that said we can”.
It is two hours since I was disturbed, forced to hide, but I’ve managed to remain unnoticed, I have learnt to do this.
Crouching, uncomfortable and wet, my calf muscles aching under the compression my posture is placing on them, my lower back is tight and painful. It has taken weeks for me to lose the urge to dampen my fingers with my tongue, a magnetic habit that I had acquired before adulthood, but the dirt ingrained in my fingers is drawing them toward my mouth. I perceive stress as dryness in my hands; even though I am no stranger to filth I feel dirt the same way. A dry branch has caught against my sleeve and if I move there will be a sure consequence, a snap, a cause so simple as to effect my discovery.
I cannot see them but their voices sound weak, I picture them emaciated, lank hair matted, with lice, like me. Both of them have the bitterness of strong people no longer able to be the source of their own determination colouring the timbre of their voices. I wonder if once they had all of their material lusts satiated, were considered beautiful among their peers. Beauty lost becomes a source of suffering; poor beauty becomes incarnate.
“Do you think that guy who use to own this place is around? I’ve heard that he’s still here somewhere.”
The question brings a light and casual laugh and he pauses before saying “You know, I think I wish he were, now.”
His sudden change in mood seems to give her confidence. “Me too, I’m sure we could all help each other. He knows every brook and gully”.
“Hey do you remember when you first bought me up here and we found him, meditating? We had that fabulous Lamb that you roasted and he had that crazy smoke.”
So I know them, God that’s disconcerting, I am frightened and hopeful. I don’t remember that time, but I do remember their voices now; I think that we were friends though I have my doubts the term is appropriate. I discovered this place much earlier than any of my temporary acolytes; I was seeking refuge, to recede from an incessant life but, weak, came to hope that strangers would arrive. They did of course pulled-in by the parties that I put on. They weren’t exactly wild but there was enough of everything to fill whatever short term emptiness arose. I was happy to fund it all.
Those who came were younger people predominately, some seeking to retain a carefree spirit in their hatch-battened corporate lives, some just hedonists, others thinking that this part of the world may hold a secret. I never held much truck with mysticism.
“Look it’s getting late, have you any idea where we are going or shall we pick our way back?” The frustration in her voice is rendering her hatefully.
“Does it matter? The time I mean? We’ll know exactly where we are in the morning, and then we can get to the cabin, make a fire, take a wash and have a good sleep. God, it’s only one night in the open, we know that we’re safe here; we could hear anyone coming for miles if that’s what’s worrying you.”
“So much for a fun time then”
She says this with such resignation, her broken heart had hoped for something on which to rest, a few days of visions, childlike, slowly entering her consciousness but car, bed and shower are strong forces.
Within the cage there is kindness
And other forces some unknown
I lean against an old wall waiting
With tricks to play wood on stone.
It’s a song that I wrote when people listened. I thought that they always would.
“Once these things mattered to you” he said.
She continues in her resigned mode, the same as contentment just moved along, same life, same actions, but a different tonal centre. It is now so dark that I cannot see a thing. She begins to hum the tune to my song. The compulsion to lick my fingers strengthens with the compulsion to show myself too. I am so frightened of being exposed I am held in stasis. As each desire grows the other keeps it firmly in check.
“They do matter. Still. Look, if we head back to car we should meet that trail, the one which leads up to the ridge. It’s a clear sky now, the moon should be up soon, we can hopefully see the copse and then make our way down to the hut. I want to do this, for you, for us. I wish he’d never sold it, especially to those two bores.
“Good girl, that’s the spirit. And if we can’t work it out from the ridge, we’ll head back to the car, sleep there overnight and find our way in the morning.”
He’s pleased, his enthusiasm is almost unbridled. I can hear him take hold of her, the whispered intimacies. They crunch away across the floor of leaves and rotting wood, back the way they came.
I wait for maybe five minutes so as to be sure that they have gone. Numb limbs, stiffened and sore it takes me a long time to make my body move freely again. The hut is only a few metres distant. I pick my way at ninety degrees to the path they took, up the hill and find a more comfortable place to watch and wait. I hope that they will find it again. I want to see who they are, see if I remember them.
I sold the hut because I didn’t want to be responsible. Loneliness is cause for despair though it is better than death and some lives are so deathly.
Thursday 21 January 2010
Amateur dramatics
It's been a few days since I have posted, and I can't say that there is a justifiable reason. Minor friction between me and my wife today, not articulated, not explicit but palpable with our history to provide context and understanding. So, I wrote a poem to try and describe, this is a draft and so maybe a revision or a few readings will create new knowledge about what is happening between us. One never knows. Here it is, if you read let me know what it says to you.
I alone: twixt desire and being tardy
She upstairs: withdrawn and supine
We, married: still and yet drifting
You (to me): "should do something!"
Me, with disdain: "what, like you?".
“He worries me”, you say to a friend.
Me? But I’m fine just groping within
For clutter and things to throw out.
21/01/10 Wheldrake, York.
I alone: twixt desire and being tardy
She upstairs: withdrawn and supine
We, married: still and yet drifting
You (to me): "should do something!"
Me, with disdain: "what, like you?".
“He worries me”, you say to a friend.
Me? But I’m fine just groping within
For clutter and things to throw out.
21/01/10 Wheldrake, York.
Thursday 14 January 2010
Dog Walk
The sun is a fragment of circle, diffuse and greyed. From high-up it is a window into a room gloomy behind a flapping curtain . In the mind of the rook as it circles, I see the wind and I hear the future uncertain, I must eat or I will starve in the winter. I walk on a page between the lines where new snow has made the way less treacherous, a white page road dirtied by journeys very recently borne upon it. Ten minutes from home, the village church clock chimes ten and the distinct ring of the bells travels through the January sky to land damped on the ears, reminiscent of a clock locked in a forgotten room.
There is no one on the road but me.
On a parallel path the sound of a car travelling away from me is harsh incongruent and catalysing, no doubt a journey with a purpose. I shuffle my feet in the snow, and ask myself directly and harshly what I should do with my day, implying self condemnation. Directly consequent thoughts are hesitant; cleaning, baking, exercise and others are mumbled in an internaly rambling list, some items repeated, and all the while guilt admonishes me to do better. When it has gained a temporary hold on my recalcitrant nature a curse falls out and I tell myself that, for god’s sake, look for work, find an income, put some bloody effort in. That sort of thing.
The dog has run on ahead, there is no need to worry it; it is safe even when cars come by unless I shout at just the inappropriate moment causing it to change direction and run towards me. As I look down the road I see that there is someone walking toward me, some distance off. I’ve seen her before: a young woman walking away from the village. If it is her she’ll be in clothes ill matched to the surroundings, dressy, flamboyant, and glamorous even. We’ve never acknowledged each other before and as we step closer to each other I find myself wanting to greet her. Ten years ago I would have been smiling and walking toward her with a positive intent. Now I am not interested other than in the most basic sense and for that reason I make sure not to look her in the face. As we pass I notice that she is dressed quite sombrely and I forget that I am not to take her in. I glance up and see tears on her face. I do smile, weakly, and say hello. She reciprocates with out a smile and we pass continuing on, in our separate ways.
The rest of my walk is uneventful although for a minute or two the sun became a full circle of washed out light. No vehicles passed by and I didn’t have to call the dog under control until we were very close to home and before crossing the main road into our estate. I promised myself coffee and toast on my return and I am looking forward to it. The bells chime eleven now and their metallic resonance has regained its sharp timbre now I am much closer. I think that I’ll clean a bit and go to the gym. Maybe tomorrow I’ll see her again.
There is no one on the road but me.
On a parallel path the sound of a car travelling away from me is harsh incongruent and catalysing, no doubt a journey with a purpose. I shuffle my feet in the snow, and ask myself directly and harshly what I should do with my day, implying self condemnation. Directly consequent thoughts are hesitant; cleaning, baking, exercise and others are mumbled in an internaly rambling list, some items repeated, and all the while guilt admonishes me to do better. When it has gained a temporary hold on my recalcitrant nature a curse falls out and I tell myself that, for god’s sake, look for work, find an income, put some bloody effort in. That sort of thing.
The dog has run on ahead, there is no need to worry it; it is safe even when cars come by unless I shout at just the inappropriate moment causing it to change direction and run towards me. As I look down the road I see that there is someone walking toward me, some distance off. I’ve seen her before: a young woman walking away from the village. If it is her she’ll be in clothes ill matched to the surroundings, dressy, flamboyant, and glamorous even. We’ve never acknowledged each other before and as we step closer to each other I find myself wanting to greet her. Ten years ago I would have been smiling and walking toward her with a positive intent. Now I am not interested other than in the most basic sense and for that reason I make sure not to look her in the face. As we pass I notice that she is dressed quite sombrely and I forget that I am not to take her in. I glance up and see tears on her face. I do smile, weakly, and say hello. She reciprocates with out a smile and we pass continuing on, in our separate ways.
The rest of my walk is uneventful although for a minute or two the sun became a full circle of washed out light. No vehicles passed by and I didn’t have to call the dog under control until we were very close to home and before crossing the main road into our estate. I promised myself coffee and toast on my return and I am looking forward to it. The bells chime eleven now and their metallic resonance has regained its sharp timbre now I am much closer. I think that I’ll clean a bit and go to the gym. Maybe tomorrow I’ll see her again.
Wednesday 13 January 2010
Objects, emotion and memory
I turn over my hand and discover a mark that I had not seen before. My skin is slackening and its pores seem darker. The contrast with my mainly white edged with pink and blue veined background accentuates the dry lines made by the cold air and too much washing that I have been doing. The mark is redder than the pink in my hands but not so much as to be red. It is a little sore. I put it to my lips and draw it and the surrounding skin into my mouth a little. The wet of my mouth feels vey cool, my finger almost itches. If I diffuse my concentration I cannot feel a difference between the two physical sensations: mouth and finger. That feels good, the soreness is alleviated.
I would hate to lose any of my hands' function. A little of my sight and hearing is already impaired. Ringing, haziness; I notice no defect in the quality of my enjoyment. I have to adjust my habits somewhat but it is no hardship. I pick up my guitar and feel the neck, the frets' repetitive underpinning of the strings, the resonance of the body when I play. I can play. It is a marvel. I love to watch and hear expert players, there is beauty in the pivoting damping flowing that matches the notes and articulation. Nothing can match Bach on the guitar. Limited tool of emotion and expression that it is, sonority timbre and percussive acceptance integrate over a seemingly infinite range. The guitarist’s fingers are so much more than a bow or a piano's hammers.
I begin to play. I can feel the mark on my hand just against the lower neck, catching against the highest string. A few scales, stretches and chords to loosen tendons and create life. And then I am off. Today all is right. The hum of boiler and fan, the chill in my lower back, even the birds and the bell of the village church are left behind. I am submerged in the word of God in a godless universe. Each cadence moving counterpoint fixes time which begins to flow harmonically. Dissonance stretches the relationship rhythm anchors it to oscillating parallels. My moment is momentarily lost. A memory attempts to surface. Recently I have found recollection harder. Yesterday, how could I not be able to remember the name of my favourite poet? An enormous 'Yes' leaps out and then his name follows. We used to read to each other, poetry, newspapers, brief paragraphs a simile for that period of our lives. Now we are submerged in novels read separately, you with your favourites me with mine. I used to write for you until debt caused you to be angry with poetry, which in truth is not much use when a business is struggling. After that I stopped for a while, but not forever, I secretly harbour ambition you know.
I have almost completed my piece. I drove in fog through much of it appearing at the coda with a small element of surprise. I am smiling with joy at a temporary shift in key, I know how it is resolved but that sure knowledge and its impending achievement, memorised notes will make it happen, only amplifies the pleasure and succeeds in persuading memory to subside. There, it is done, the final chord. I put down the guitar and look at my hand once again, the mark has gone.
I would hate to lose any of my hands' function. A little of my sight and hearing is already impaired. Ringing, haziness; I notice no defect in the quality of my enjoyment. I have to adjust my habits somewhat but it is no hardship. I pick up my guitar and feel the neck, the frets' repetitive underpinning of the strings, the resonance of the body when I play. I can play. It is a marvel. I love to watch and hear expert players, there is beauty in the pivoting damping flowing that matches the notes and articulation. Nothing can match Bach on the guitar. Limited tool of emotion and expression that it is, sonority timbre and percussive acceptance integrate over a seemingly infinite range. The guitarist’s fingers are so much more than a bow or a piano's hammers.
I begin to play. I can feel the mark on my hand just against the lower neck, catching against the highest string. A few scales, stretches and chords to loosen tendons and create life. And then I am off. Today all is right. The hum of boiler and fan, the chill in my lower back, even the birds and the bell of the village church are left behind. I am submerged in the word of God in a godless universe. Each cadence moving counterpoint fixes time which begins to flow harmonically. Dissonance stretches the relationship rhythm anchors it to oscillating parallels. My moment is momentarily lost. A memory attempts to surface. Recently I have found recollection harder. Yesterday, how could I not be able to remember the name of my favourite poet? An enormous 'Yes' leaps out and then his name follows. We used to read to each other, poetry, newspapers, brief paragraphs a simile for that period of our lives. Now we are submerged in novels read separately, you with your favourites me with mine. I used to write for you until debt caused you to be angry with poetry, which in truth is not much use when a business is struggling. After that I stopped for a while, but not forever, I secretly harbour ambition you know.
I have almost completed my piece. I drove in fog through much of it appearing at the coda with a small element of surprise. I am smiling with joy at a temporary shift in key, I know how it is resolved but that sure knowledge and its impending achievement, memorised notes will make it happen, only amplifies the pleasure and succeeds in persuading memory to subside. There, it is done, the final chord. I put down the guitar and look at my hand once again, the mark has gone.
Tuesday 12 January 2010
Memory and Positive Thinking
Here's a link to this week's Radio 4 programme 'Start the Week'. Andrew Marr with Orhan Pamuk, Barbara Ehrenreich, Simon Schama and Susan Richards. Orhan Pamuk and Simon Schama drew me in. Barbara Ehrenreich has something fascinating to say about the fascism of positive thiking. Susan Richards annoyed the hell out of me.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00pqfjh/Start_the_Week_11_01_2010/
I got to thinking and writing and this is the result. Maybe later I'll revist and rework.
Rub together two fingers and the roughness you feel, let it multiply a few times in your mind. Concentrate upon the sensation alone and whatever it is that you wish to do put it aside for awhile and imagine loss. After you part your fingers both the impression of touch and that of loss remain, like diminishing and wistful itches, slipping away into the future. If you now stroke your hands together gently soft courageously there is a memory of that original marking. Put your hand to your face and feel its warmth, part your lips and breathe out gently, dampness on the palm and fingers; if your lips are not moving it can seem as if there is no separation between the sensation felt in the lips or the hands. Smell your breath as a lover would smell it. Know where you are soft and where you are coarse. Our face is a record of our time, contoured routed a death mask in life.
Physical specificity is very truthful; it integrates space and time in our senses and we cannot deny it. Physicality can catalyse memory. Remembering is an act filtered through time, pinning down details; one memory can spin off into many new worlds. I have borrowed these words as I have borrowed the knotted place and moment that I occupy. One day I will have to give it back.
It is said that I want to pin my life down to its impulses, to create the opposite of an idea and discover an electric centre where obsessive love resides, and where I am peripheral. It is said that if one cannot see a golden future then it is you that is at fault, as life cannot be to blame. Well let me tell you that life is bloody well to blame. To control every aspect of life is non-sensical, there is too much to take in. Only in the desert, if living the life of an ascetic, could the material life be separated sufficiently from the spiritual to allow sense to be made of it all. And even then the material could harm. No positive thought could make it better. No positive thought can make it better.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00pqfjh/Start_the_Week_11_01_2010/
I got to thinking and writing and this is the result. Maybe later I'll revist and rework.
Rub together two fingers and the roughness you feel, let it multiply a few times in your mind. Concentrate upon the sensation alone and whatever it is that you wish to do put it aside for awhile and imagine loss. After you part your fingers both the impression of touch and that of loss remain, like diminishing and wistful itches, slipping away into the future. If you now stroke your hands together gently soft courageously there is a memory of that original marking. Put your hand to your face and feel its warmth, part your lips and breathe out gently, dampness on the palm and fingers; if your lips are not moving it can seem as if there is no separation between the sensation felt in the lips or the hands. Smell your breath as a lover would smell it. Know where you are soft and where you are coarse. Our face is a record of our time, contoured routed a death mask in life.
Physical specificity is very truthful; it integrates space and time in our senses and we cannot deny it. Physicality can catalyse memory. Remembering is an act filtered through time, pinning down details; one memory can spin off into many new worlds. I have borrowed these words as I have borrowed the knotted place and moment that I occupy. One day I will have to give it back.
It is said that I want to pin my life down to its impulses, to create the opposite of an idea and discover an electric centre where obsessive love resides, and where I am peripheral. It is said that if one cannot see a golden future then it is you that is at fault, as life cannot be to blame. Well let me tell you that life is bloody well to blame. To control every aspect of life is non-sensical, there is too much to take in. Only in the desert, if living the life of an ascetic, could the material life be separated sufficiently from the spiritual to allow sense to be made of it all. And even then the material could harm. No positive thought could make it better. No positive thought can make it better.
Saturday 9 January 2010
Midnight
I have had the opportunity to enjoy a great deal of time alone these last few days but I haven't made best use of it.
I am toying with the idea of starting a novel. I know that this seems glib of me seeing as the idea would require action alongside things such as my tendency for inaction, my musical escapades, the imperative of looking for work, living under the threat of a financial implosion and managing the fall-out from my ever reacting marriage.
I want to write. I quite like the idea of being an impoverished artist for a while. Not forever though. Some material comfort does have an appeal especially as I can glimpse the coming of my advanced age, a place in time where physical comfort is definitely proportionate to wealth. I am reading around novel writing at the moment: E.M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel, John Mullan's How Novels Work. Very daunting. Credibilty and Beauty are success criteria, but must not be the objects of pursuit. These things can only occur when that most unnatural medium, the novel, becomes a thing completely natural of itself. One thing I've learnt from Forster is that:
Plot = Story + Cause; Story = Character + Action + Time; Natural = Believeable Characters (Flat and Round) + Logic and Mystery.
There's a sort of irony in this as I seem to be all cause and no story. I have lots that I want to say but am at the place where I need character to say it. And I need Characters to say it too. One thing I think I can do with this blog is being to create a scrap-book of people, behaviours, situations, things that may help with my yet un-written desires.
I'll think about it. Good Night World.
I am toying with the idea of starting a novel. I know that this seems glib of me seeing as the idea would require action alongside things such as my tendency for inaction, my musical escapades, the imperative of looking for work, living under the threat of a financial implosion and managing the fall-out from my ever reacting marriage.
I want to write. I quite like the idea of being an impoverished artist for a while. Not forever though. Some material comfort does have an appeal especially as I can glimpse the coming of my advanced age, a place in time where physical comfort is definitely proportionate to wealth. I am reading around novel writing at the moment: E.M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel, John Mullan's How Novels Work. Very daunting. Credibilty and Beauty are success criteria, but must not be the objects of pursuit. These things can only occur when that most unnatural medium, the novel, becomes a thing completely natural of itself. One thing I've learnt from Forster is that:
Plot = Story + Cause; Story = Character + Action + Time; Natural = Believeable Characters (Flat and Round) + Logic and Mystery.
There's a sort of irony in this as I seem to be all cause and no story. I have lots that I want to say but am at the place where I need character to say it. And I need Characters to say it too. One thing I think I can do with this blog is being to create a scrap-book of people, behaviours, situations, things that may help with my yet un-written desires.
I'll think about it. Good Night World.
Thursday 7 January 2010
Falling Asleep
I have an idea that maybe the elements of our consciousness wax and wane in a reciprocal harmony. I suspect that the oscillations are many dimensional. One dimension I will call evil because my vocabulary is too limited to name it correctly. So I put forward the idea that we exist in a universe where one of the critical measurements required to fix our position needs to be plotted on an axis of evil. I deliberately borrow from GWB. If I may also borrow from Hannah Arendt then another dimension is banality, amply demonstrated by Bush. These things will call us to account if we fall asleep on our watch.
Monday 4 January 2010
I am as bleak today as the frozen road.
I am as bleak today as the frozen road,
The compacted path a concealed cliché,
My way is as hard as rails. The low sun
Rushes to my eye, unrefracted and white
Concealing dirt beneath tracks pristine.
Summer suffocates. Its butterflies'
Fluttering stench seeks awakening.
What will it find? Hard winter is clean.
Something dark sleeps fitfully within:
Safe now, care is requisite in spring.
Edited 7th Jan 2010
The compacted path a concealed cliché,
My way is as hard as rails. The low sun
Rushes to my eye, unrefracted and white
Concealing dirt beneath tracks pristine.
Summer suffocates. Its butterflies'
Fluttering stench seeks awakening.
What will it find? Hard winter is clean.
Something dark sleeps fitfully within:
Safe now, care is requisite in spring.
Edited 7th Jan 2010
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- A Man Without Qualities
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