So when I think of you I think of Stevie Nicks teased hair. And how when it comes, it comes quietly like a fever. You in your black dress against that new girl, all elegant and tousled hair. We avoid and avoid, and you can be so sullen and so unsure. There is no vast hinterland stretching out, up into the solid mass of the alps. No vast suburbs, decaying and declining along the river. "a lot of nice houses by the river" "yes" "looks really nice" "you know the last girl that died, back there thats where they found her body" "was that the maori girl" "no it was another one", and the light filtering down makes everything inconsequential. But that is the following day, not in that moment of gaps between faces and ice faces and dirty hair. And I followed through with what I said I would. And you are the same. And the South Island is the same. So many different forms of "reluctance" and so much silence.
and it turns in to this
When I went to sleep, my arm was resting against my head, propping it up like a pillow. it was too hot for pillows, and I slept out of the duvet, so I guess it was too hot for duvets too. I have taken to falling asleep listening to albums again, for a while I preferred relative silence and would fall asleep to the sound of solitary cars and the distant sound of a radio left on in my grandmother's room. So I dreamt this listless dream that left me awake at four in the morning, the least agreeable time of day as night settles uneasily into the blue light of early morning. I dreamt I was in the living room and my grandmother asked "jonathan, what are you looking at?"
I replied that I was looking at the window which was being barraged by hundreds birds attacking it, the whole window filled with restless and terrifying birds. So many brown birds with their lifeless eyes, and flapping wings and the sound of their wings and beaks tapping against the shaking window.
she made this silent face at me, as in sort of blank.
And how Columbus looks so careful in the morning, as if preparing itself.
The north mile stretching out like an arm draped, a long arm I guess.
And every time I walk I see another African American fashion icon, a sort of low rent diva.
Sometimes in matching maroon velour tracksuit, sometimes in gold shoes.
Her in her bathroom, carefully brushing down her hair.
Like how her room is always warm.
The male review club two blocks away.
The occasional sound of loudspeaker voices.
Every morning.
and like falling asleep to bad american television.
ABC/NBC/CNBC/OH/IO
I replied that I was looking at the window which was being barraged by hundreds birds attacking it, the whole window filled with restless and terrifying birds. So many brown birds with their lifeless eyes, and flapping wings and the sound of their wings and beaks tapping against the shaking window.
she made this silent face at me, as in sort of blank.
And how Columbus looks so careful in the morning, as if preparing itself.
The north mile stretching out like an arm draped, a long arm I guess.
And every time I walk I see another African American fashion icon, a sort of low rent diva.
Sometimes in matching maroon velour tracksuit, sometimes in gold shoes.
Her in her bathroom, carefully brushing down her hair.
Like how her room is always warm.
The male review club two blocks away.
The occasional sound of loudspeaker voices.
Every morning.
and like falling asleep to bad american television.
ABC/NBC/CNBC/OH/IO
I hurt my leg running along by the canals, disused of course, in the morning. Where noone was about other than the ocassional frizzy haired middle aged woman walking her dog through the morning as I sort of limped past. Setting out on a run and returning limping, limping in little white shorts and laced white shoes. The canal network stretches north through the "Black Country" into Birmingham where it reaches out like veins, like the way in which the pulmonary veins carry relatively oxygenated blood from the lungs to the heart. Except nothing moves in the canals, or at least nothing I saw. A silent network of locks and sinister british oak, suspicious oak. Through brick tunnels with names scrawled in black lettering, all dark against the morning fog; the tops of railways forgotten. Past the industrial estates, long stay parks and off licenses. Bright like English grey. The boys I sort of limped past to get to brick lined suburbs were capable of terrible things.
All dressed in gold leaf, as thirteen, all solemn and quiet, against the bulk of the vine that stretched up over rock formation at the end of the property. Focused on the view it affords, out across the estuary toward the Pacific Ocean. In the memory it looks like a dream, the ocean's blue unending form. I would cycle to football practice in my blue and white stretch socks, and the boys would talk about putting fingers into girls. If I think about it hard enough, I can remember the feel of the vines resting against my body. I can remember my peeling skin. I can remember falling asleep in dark places at the bottom of the garden. I can remember listlessness and
And when you close yr legs around me, I think "oh there is something so cruel about my baby" like a lyric from a song. and your red hair gets so dirty so quickly, all tangled and pretty. and you are so much prettier than I can bear.
I don't even know which place I am in though, maybe I do it's all so confused. is all dark like the sky tonight, even though it's meant to be a full moon, the sky is all clouded over so you can't tell really. I feel so lonely or something like that and empty, it feels like breaking up all the time. Maybe that is what the issue is here, its not about letting go or something, maybe I just need my best friend.
And how needs and wants dissipate. Waking up to hangovers to the next want to need to want to need to miss you more than breathing, how it forms a ghost story, how spectral you have formed. Perfectly. A minutiae and a falsity. A room consisting of glass jars, a plastic processing factory. The painted interiors of every home. When I saw you again you had disintegrated, in drooped eyes and shuffling. How your sentences sound muffled and quiet. I don't even understand what a silence constitutes between us, how you have no words. How I don't have anything to say to you. I think about her waiting by the horseshoe lake, I think about her walking around Shirley and breathing in and an intangible netwrok forms between the streets like phonelines. There are so many quiet details, like her cellulite in her legs running up to her abdomen which pokes out between her pink night clothes. Shorts and a top. "you left the tap running" "i like the sound of it." I did then. As if by describing the entire room, I can have some sort of clarity. Like the lists in my books from Emma. And when it comes it comes like a flood.
Mishima alone on the garden path, his clothes all wet from the rain that came suddenly and violently. Mishima with Shintaro Ishihara in 1956, American songs on bakelite crystal radio set. Oh he loved Tokyo, you know but not in the autumn. Shintaro removed his wool trousers, and lay on the bed, his penis all expectant and all, and all and all. They made love on the bed, privately and carefully. 花ざかりの森. The forest in full spring. Mishima thought about spring as Shintaro fucked him. He thought about lots of things I guess, the transformation of the soul, the deterioation of postwar Japan, but not then. It was cold and the rain had left his clothes wet, and they lay carefully folded in a pile on the floor. Tommorrow he would dry them and hope that the rain would stop long enough that he could go for a walk. He didn't know that "Everyone loves me" would be his final words, he had not planned the ritual seppukku.
Shintaro, reading alone in the cabin that they stayed in when Tokyo got too much for them. Eventually, Mishima came to believe that his image as a public figure eclipsed his works, that his life was his art. His meticulously planned ritual suicide was envisioned as the climax to his greatest fiction -- himself. So Mishima is bleeding to death as the blade comes inside him, carefully and tentitively. Mishima is all beatific and holy. In the minutes before his death he transforms into Saint Sebastian.
Shintaro, reading alone in the cabin that they stayed in when Tokyo got too much for them. Eventually, Mishima came to believe that his image as a public figure eclipsed his works, that his life was his art. His meticulously planned ritual suicide was envisioned as the climax to his greatest fiction -- himself. So Mishima is bleeding to death as the blade comes inside him, carefully and tentitively. Mishima is all beatific and holy. In the minutes before his death he transforms into Saint Sebastian.
And all marble and velvet. Rome with its divided power and the Emperor Diocletian retiring to work on his vegetable garden. Eusebias is sitting up late and thinking about it all, as he does. Sitting up with his slave scribe and they laugh together occasionally, and he lets the slave out with his Nubian girl sometimes. "It takes a crook to catch a crook" they laugh together.
The Emperor Gaius Aurelius Valerius Diocletianus in the garden, brings up a squash so perfect he calls his wife out of her chambers. She admires the squash, it is perfectly formed and a gift from the Gods. They are happy together on their estate, he sits down in the antechamber as his wife dresses for dinner.
Sebastian, the captain of the Praetorian Guard, converting those to the true faith. How Sebastian reminded the Emperor Dioceltian of himself. Sebastian, worker of miracles on mute girls. Sebastian, converter and Christian. The traitor and the saint, one in the same. Sebastian in a field, tied up to a post and in a moment of absolute violence his body is filled with arrows, and how the blood trails down his body from his muscles and from his chest and from his legs, how the earth around Sebastian is crimson. So dark. And how de Voraigne just sort of decided that the Emperor wanted his "body to look as that of a hedgehog", as he sat and thought up more ways for the saints to have proved their true faith.
And Mishima, as a child looking at the picture of Saint Sebastian by the man Guido Reni. And Mishima, as a man imitating that picture, as a photographer stands four metres away from him so that he can photograph Mishima topless with fake arrows. Like in the painting, there is no blood from the wounds caused by arrows. Unlike Sebastian slumped on a field, death unknown. Probably wasn't looking up ponderously, aware that he was going straight to heaven. Reni, I guess, had his own priorities. And how Sebastian becomes like Apollo, comes to replace Apollo.
And Mishima, as a child looking at the picture of Saint Sebastian by the man Guido Reni. And Mishima, as a man imitating that picture, as a photographer stands four metres away from him so that he can photograph Mishima topless with fake arrows. Like in the painting, there is no blood from the wounds caused by arrows. Unlike Sebastian slumped on a field, death unknown. Probably wasn't looking up ponderously, aware that he was going straight to heaven. Reni, I guess, had his own priorities. And how Sebastian becomes like Apollo, comes to replace Apollo.
All dressed in gold leaf, as thirteen, all solemn and quiet, against the bulk of the vine that stretched up over rock formation at the end of the property. Focused on the view it affords, out across the estuary toward the Pacific Ocean. In the memory it looks like a dream, the ocean's blue unending form. I would cycle to football practice in my blue and white stretch socks, and the boys would talk about putting fingers into girls. If I think about it hard enough, I can remember the feel of the vines resting against my body. I can remember my peeling skin. I can remember falling asleep in dark places at the bottom of the garden. I can remember listlessness and
all that weightlessness. and yr drifting off mid sentence. and when you look at me you say my skin is too dark. and that is when you look at me. as you position your head, a pillow with yr eye-marks. and I am am lying in the grass. summer sun, and I am so quiet..
So when I woke up this morning, she told me that in my sleep I sounded like I had a bad dream or something and was saying "don't touch me" and "get out, get out." My dream was glacial and quiet, Antarctic white. I woke up to a bleeding nose, like my father sometimes gets. The blood went onto the pillow and seeped through, which I took as "a bad sign", a portent. I left the room and went to the bathroom and the blood from my nose soaked through some tissues and then it stopped. The I went back into her room and she told me I sounded like I had a bad dream of something and was saying "don't touch me." The light looked wrong as it came through her curtains, and I felt improper with my new mustache that looks inappropriate and my body had unknown marks from the blood from my nose. I borrowed a teeshirt and walked back home.
In board and battern, and all white against pink vistas, it is how Canterbury should look. Currently there is some sort of heather in blossom all the way home from New Brighton to Mount Pleasant. And lots of dead birds. I counted five.
The colonic hydrotherapy store has balloons all over it. I don’t know why. Maybe they are having a party.
Frances and I would stay up late listening to ambient music, and I would fall asleep too quickly. I didn’t think it was a problem. It probably wasn’t a problem. Frances spends a lot of time on Facebook these days, its not that I am stalking her, its just easier to keep tabs on people these days. She hacked into my account and read my conversations with Madeline. She got really upset, because I said to Madeline things I would say to Frances. I guess she was upset that I didn’t like her enough to make it work so much anymore, or maybe she was upset that I was hitting on someone else. The saddest part is that I wasn’t really hitting on her, it was just a playful conversation, and when I later asked Madeline to come to dinner with me she evaded me. These days, Frances and I sleep in separate bedrooms and shower in different houses.
I turned out the light and lay next to Frances, her breathing was soft and gentle and she caressed my arm. In the half light of the room, a flickering streetlight shined on us every now and then. Frances’ face looked straight at mine, and I saw part of her cheek coming closer to me.
Frances will spend the day with her friends. She has new friends now, and new clothes, and she will get a new haircut. I don’t have new friends, mostly I am trying to keep in touch with old ones. Our conversations are pretty much the same, they express worry about my situation and think I am not looking too good. I am not feeling so good. I work on my music mostly, writing about people I don’t know and situations I don’t want to be in. Frances and I meet up occasionally. We drew pictures of each other, her face is always distorted in my drawings, only small features are ok. We went outside the School of Music and she lay in my arms, and I tried to draw trees. We talked about stuff, and lay on the concrete in the cool wintery light. She looked beautiful.
We walked to the busstop across the street, and it was cold and she hugged me, her body pressed close to mine. On the bus, I think there was a feeling of closure. We stayed on the bus and she got off. She smiled a little smile, a faint smile, the delicate smile of old lovers, an unforgiving smile. I stayed on the bus with eyes picking out the different features of everyone on the bus while thinking about the past, and our little deaths.
After work, I sort of lay around for a while, wishing Frances was there laying next to me, the streetlight shining on her face. Except there aren’t streetlights that flicker through my window, only the view of the hills and sometimes the moonlight filtering through my windows. I don’t shut my curtains much. Only if a girl is round. I wondered if Frances was asleep, what she was thinking of. I like thinking about Frances. I like Frances. And now she is gone.
hey see like terrible somewhat out
The horizon line outside the cabin on the West Coast of New Zealand. I thought about the sea, there would be dark waves, like that movie “a perfect storm” and there would be no perfect straight line forming at in indefinate distance perpendicular at all sides to myself. Sometimes it is better to be scared of the sea. Caleb went swimming and came back with bloodied legs.
and she had her hair like some sort of sixties icon, it was I guess "strawberry blonde" like the boy Simon Riddell from my high school. I remember him describing his hair in those very words, as I guess you would if your hair was like that. like the Baldoventti painting. Apparently, a man can have blond hair but he is never a "blonde." She wore it piled over her head, it was carefully tied up behind and formed something almost unbearably perfect. I thought the style had died, and could only be utilised in novels by Murakami.
She sat next to me and was talking about how when she was my age, her friend could get front seat tickets to the Odeon theatre in central city Birmingham. From my research, and I have nothing at the moment but time to research, in the sixties Birmingham was the grimmest city in the world. She talked about how she was obssessed with soul music and had seen Smokey Robinson and Otis Redding live which was enviable enough.
then she said:
"I was in the front row for the Supremes,which was deeply exciting. there at the Odeon. Diana Ross with her hand, grabbed me out of my front row seat and danced with me on the stage. You know, her hand was small and claw like."
I don't think I have ever been so in love with anyone.
I don’t know I guess the whole thing seems like a prepared script you know, this was just like a read through where nothing was new, nothing was beautiful, and nothing was resolved, I couldn’t pretend to be happy and I think she just felt awkward. She looked different, not her eyes, which I kept focusing on because I guess wasn’t prepared for the physical reality of Frances. She really has beautiful eyes, as I walked away from her down Worcester boulevard, they were all I could think about, well not all I could, but they sent me back where none of this happened. She pulled close to me and felt different and smelled different, the short dyed red hair and new body someone that is familiar but distant. I want it to be okay in my heart, in all of our hearts so much, but it just isn’t.
Frances had stopped wearing that necklace last time I saw her. It made me sad. I bought it for her at Christmas from Mirabels shop, it was an old coin that someone had carefully carved, leaving a delicate tui shape. It was a beautiful thing, not overly expensive but lovely. Her neck was bare last time I saw her, but she might have been wearing the perfume I bought her. My sisters last boyfriend came round and unleashed a holocaust of destruction on my sisters possessions. She is very materialistic, maybe we all are but not in the same way. It is not her defining quality or anything, she could be more so. I walked up the drive and saw her perfume and makeup coagulating in some powdered stain on the pavement. I felt like getting some white paint and surrounding it. I felt like doing that to my own body today too. I have got like this lately. I should stop thinking about the past, and about frances and about everything. It is powerful though, it could be everything to me. I don't like when I hear anything about her, i waited five months for a message from her and I finally got a really vapid and empty thing, detailing the correct spelling of Eletra Williams name, i guess I shouldn't fault frances, she was once something beautiful and now she is something I want to hide away like the way she hid my necklace.
So when I woke up this morning, she told me that in my sleep I sounded like I had a bad dream or something and was saying "don't touch me" and "get out, get out." My dream was glacial and quiet, Antarctic white. I woke up to a bleeding nose, like my father sometimes gets. The blood went onto the pillow and seeped through, which I took as "a bad sign", a portent. I left the room and went to the bathroom and the blood from my nose soaked through some tissues and then it stopped. The I went back into her room and she told me I sounded like I had a bad dream of something and was saying "don't touch me." The light looked wrong as it came through her curtains, and I felt improper with my new mustache that looks inappropriate and my body had unknown marks from the blood from my nose. I borrowed a teeshirt and walked back home.
In board and battern, and all white against pink vistas, it is how Canterbury should look. Currently there is some sort of heather in blossom all the way home from New Brighton to Mount Pleasant. And lots of dead birds. I counted five.
shes a solemn thing sometimes.
and probably completely dishonest.
and the teatowel I bought today is perfect.
and the rain seemed like it had followed me.
all across those city.
jcpenney, tkmaxx, yurakucho hankyu,
and I am so so scared of you all the time.
and when I smile at you, you say I seem like a child.
and I hate you much more than I care to admit.
the hammerbeam roof.
so many little interiors.
like columbus ohio.
like edinburgh.
like tokyo.
I found their large breasts, such as Jessica Strathdee.
I found them on me as you pressed against thighs, all tightened around me.
And you said, you do not kiss and had not kissed all year. Your voice. I guess you really liked me.
I said that I was dangerous. I told a lot that night saying "i will be honest" Its a bad personal habit.
As home to the five girls that I am only vaguely interested in, and only half watching the movie Annie Hall, which is not mine, I stole my parents, the other bad personal habit. As written it all at once. Like washing my sheets as soon as the smell of ammonia and freshly fallen hair might spread. As you smoke out of my window and spits semen out of my window. It may be too alluring. Your big breasts like Jessica Strathdee.
I sat drinking this mysterious german liquor that tasted like christmas as I half watched "the trooping of the guard" with my grandmother. They made a television special out of it, with commentators and close ups, probably action replays, I guess I will never know as I walked away to make music in the front room instead of watching the procession. My grandmother lay down on her couch with her hand resting on her stomach, and I sat on the seat that faces her. The room was filled with all these cards from her friends and these "cheery" summer flowers. "Cheery" feels like the only appropriate word. I felt happy then, watching her for as she lay on the couch and ignored the military formations for the Queen. I thought, as she lay down asleep, of the way that everyone looks impossibly beautiful when they are sleeping. Maybe not everyone, but she did in the warmly lit living room with the light from the television causing flickering shadows on the wall.
and probably completely dishonest.
and the teatowel I bought today is perfect.
and the rain seemed like it had followed me.
all across those city.
jcpenney, tkmaxx, yurakucho hankyu,
and I am so so scared of you all the time.
and when I smile at you, you say I seem like a child.
and I hate you much more than I care to admit.
the hammerbeam roof.
so many little interiors.
like columbus ohio.
like edinburgh.
like tokyo.
I found their large breasts, such as Jessica Strathdee.
I found them on me as you pressed against thighs, all tightened around me.
And you said, you do not kiss and had not kissed all year. Your voice. I guess you really liked me.
I said that I was dangerous. I told a lot that night saying "i will be honest" Its a bad personal habit.
As home to the five girls that I am only vaguely interested in, and only half watching the movie Annie Hall, which is not mine, I stole my parents, the other bad personal habit. As written it all at once. Like washing my sheets as soon as the smell of ammonia and freshly fallen hair might spread. As you smoke out of my window and spits semen out of my window. It may be too alluring. Your big breasts like Jessica Strathdee.
I sat drinking this mysterious german liquor that tasted like christmas as I half watched "the trooping of the guard" with my grandmother. They made a television special out of it, with commentators and close ups, probably action replays, I guess I will never know as I walked away to make music in the front room instead of watching the procession. My grandmother lay down on her couch with her hand resting on her stomach, and I sat on the seat that faces her. The room was filled with all these cards from her friends and these "cheery" summer flowers. "Cheery" feels like the only appropriate word. I felt happy then, watching her for as she lay on the couch and ignored the military formations for the Queen. I thought, as she lay down asleep, of the way that everyone looks impossibly beautiful when they are sleeping. Maybe not everyone, but she did in the warmly lit living room with the light from the television causing flickering shadows on the wall.
I kept alive mean head in a machine in the factory
I kept my face enclosed slammed shut in a wall
I believed my age
I believed a sensitive small hand getting caught in a small location in the metal of the screen cut it
Everything
I believed a new kind moment
I believed my reflection from daily seems out there
as also in the factory
and is daily spent thinking of it
each last error of everyone… It forms the horseshoe lake
The colonic hydrotherapy store has balloons all over it. I don’t know why. Maybe they are having a party.
Little Deaths
Frances and I would stay up late listening to ambient music, and I would fall asleep too quickly. I didn’t think it was a problem. It probably wasn’t a problem. Frances spends a lot of time on Facebook these days, its not that I am stalking her, its just easier to keep tabs on people these days. She hacked into my account and read my conversations with Madeline. She got really upset, because I said to Madeline things I would say to Frances. I guess she was upset that I didn’t like her enough to make it work so much anymore, or maybe she was upset that I was hitting on someone else. The saddest part is that I wasn’t really hitting on her, it was just a playful conversation, and when I later asked Madeline to come to dinner with me she evaded me. These days, Frances and I sleep in separate bedrooms and shower in different houses.
I turned out the light and lay next to Frances, her breathing was soft and gentle and she caressed my arm. In the half light of the room, a flickering streetlight shined on us every now and then. Frances’ face looked straight at mine, and I saw part of her cheek coming closer to me.
Frances will spend the day with her friends. She has new friends now, and new clothes, and she will get a new haircut. I don’t have new friends, mostly I am trying to keep in touch with old ones. Our conversations are pretty much the same, they express worry about my situation and think I am not looking too good. I am not feeling so good. I work on my music mostly, writing about people I don’t know and situations I don’t want to be in. Frances and I meet up occasionally. We drew pictures of each other, her face is always distorted in my drawings, only small features are ok. We went outside the School of Music and she lay in my arms, and I tried to draw trees. We talked about stuff, and lay on the concrete in the cool wintery light. She looked beautiful.
We walked to the busstop across the street, and it was cold and she hugged me, her body pressed close to mine. On the bus, I think there was a feeling of closure. We stayed on the bus and she got off. She smiled a little smile, a faint smile, the delicate smile of old lovers, an unforgiving smile. I stayed on the bus with eyes picking out the different features of everyone on the bus while thinking about the past, and our little deaths.
After work, I sort of lay around for a while, wishing Frances was there laying next to me, the streetlight shining on her face. Except there aren’t streetlights that flicker through my window, only the view of the hills and sometimes the moonlight filtering through my windows. I don’t shut my curtains much. Only if a girl is round. I wondered if Frances was asleep, what she was thinking of. I like thinking about Frances. I like Frances. And now she is gone.
Have felt over
I was "ungeheftetes" at everything
I can move away
Closed eyes closed hands
Theres no necessity
They are cutting down the trees of my hill, as I walked up the hill I could smell pine resin, it smelled warm and inviting like a forest. The hill was dark and wet when I walked home, and the street lights shone white light that lit up the pavement in glimmers. I got pretty sad about it all when I got to my house and saw the half decapitated, is that the word?, I don’t actually know how to describe it, corpse? of the tree that has stood above my house as long as I have lived in Mount Pleasant, it was a pretty stately tree, regal or something, but the Council was worried it could collapse and destroy my family’s house which would be “bad news”. It was a really big tree you know. Anyway the tree is now like in a medieval torture chamber or something, they have started on the left side, its so big it took like three days to destroy. It was really sad seeing it like that all cut up and split in half. I got home and felt pretty sad about the tree. Maybe not just about the tree.
ghana movie fantasy
I did see one girl who was very tired from a big day cleaning and was wearing a yellow cleaning costume thing and I said to her that she was the prettiest girl in Tokyo, when she smiled her unfortunate teeth could have spoiled the effect but I think she was still, probably, the prettiest girl I saw in Tokyo.
"he went mad playing mother goose. he was a broken and exhausted man at forty three. "the funniest man on earth" as it said on the posters. "ever seen his eyes?" asked marie lloyd. "the saddest eyes in the whole world. thats why we all laughed at danny. because if we hadn't laughed, we should have cried ourselves sick. thats what i believe real comedy is. you know. its almost like crying."
"on his way home across the solent by the early evening ferry, gladstone was too absorbed in robert louis stevenson's "kidnapped", just published, to feel much grievance."
"on his way home across the solent by the early evening ferry, gladstone was too absorbed in robert louis stevenson's "kidnapped", just published, to feel much grievance."
"and how are you, are you okay jonathan?" it seemed like an afterthought, an affectation.
"oh yes, I am fine. I am just, you know, sitting listening to bach."
"you like bach?"
"yes..." i paused here as I didn't really know what else to say
"well good for you," he said sort of congratulating me or something like that, "better than television I say!"
and then the conversation pretty much ended.
"oh yes, I am fine. I am just, you know, sitting listening to bach."
"you like bach?"
"yes..." i paused here as I didn't really know what else to say
"well good for you," he said sort of congratulating me or something like that, "better than television I say!"
and then the conversation pretty much ended.
Either with the short north lying out toward Clintonville, or the low static in the theatre at Ohio State; all burgundy and pine. All forming something opaque in a distance connected by old telegraph poles and unnecessarily wide streets.
So of course we drifted through that night, into young bars all extremely familiar.
I forgot why I came anyway.
A dance with the loveliest girl in Ohio,
you piroutte! With me, for a while.
Minor Busby Berkeley transformation where the whole room sort of faded away, mirrored surfaces and stage smoke, the lonely drinkers in vacant booths disappearing, I guess they will anyway.
Proceeding to disintegrating walls.
With her against me.
Becomes something pure, of course.
As her turned back reveals itself to be the loveliest back in the entire state of Ohio.
So of course we drifted through that night, into young bars all extremely familiar.
I forgot why I came anyway.
A dance with the loveliest girl in Ohio,
you piroutte! With me, for a while.
Minor Busby Berkeley transformation where the whole room sort of faded away, mirrored surfaces and stage smoke, the lonely drinkers in vacant booths disappearing, I guess they will anyway.
Proceeding to disintegrating walls.
With her against me.
Becomes something pure, of course.
As her turned back reveals itself to be the loveliest back in the entire state of Ohio.
When I went into the Cathedral the building smelled like honey and they were playing this choral thing on compact disc, probably would have been better if they had a real choir, but it gave a "christmassy feel". Anyway, it was all choral and then there was this organ song, I was in the Cathedral for a while so got to hear the whole thing. Organ songs are always so depressing, maybe organs shouldn't ever be alone, I don't know many people who listen to organ music but there must be some because I think there is an organ section in the Public Library. Organs, pretty depressing, unless it is like one of those really loud and I dont know, blatantly organ like songs, you know when it explodes in full pipes and the choir is blazing away and its like Vietnam movies with napalm explosions and everything is ablaze and alight. Maybe thats what heaven is like.
hey see like terrible somewhat out
in the layers in the softest skin
I hide themselves to hiding places in the layers of you
you to know that are,
as I do not feel like red light in the printing area in the childhood
you speak not with me, as much as, which I may now do,
if you feel her terribly do I believe, like them, everything can
The horizon line outside the cabin on the West Coast of New Zealand. I thought about the sea, there would be dark waves, like that movie “a perfect storm” and there would be no perfect straight line forming at in indefinate distance perpendicular at all sides to myself. Sometimes it is better to be scared of the sea. Caleb went swimming and came back with bloodied legs.
To get me I guess. These stereoscopic images of a Japan in the later half of the nineteenth century. Because they remind me of what I wanted to find in Japan but only momentarily saw in this temple of some denomination. And how Tokyo is so terribly busy all the time, and impersonal and yet I walked into the people I was staying with in the same crummy backpackers where the shower room looked like it hadn't changed from 1985, which is normally all fine and all with like complete Molly Ringwald fantasy appropriation, as I was walking away from the imperial gardens. Like Paul Theroux. all anyone ever wants to read is travel literature, except when you are actually travelling and then you wish you had money for a taxi instead of walking endlessly around concrete streets. And how the stereoscope makes the world all gaudy tremors, even though the expressions of the faces don't change like at all. In that temple, two men rung their bells I guess, tin hand bells and hummed lowly. This was in back alley before I felt like vomiting up my dragonball z crisps. because you trust a brand you know. and I implicitly trust goku.
I saw the most beautiful thing today for five seconds, like my computer slowed down and everything was all jittery and moved like a daniel crooks video, all fragile and beautiful and fleeting. I don't think thats how I felt for all the time these six months or anything, but there have been some golden days and beautiful nights like the slowed computer screen, when I felt that anything was possible, that the whole city could disintegrate and fracture and it would be ok. I felt ok. In the winter I walked in the forest with amy and sam and the light was dark, and there were figures in the distance, we walked back in silence, through the forest, she was in her fur coat like foxes or something like that. We were warm and young and the twilight was almost a feeling.
Close annual eyes,
does not fall sleeping does you,
you must about the whole thing seeing dream fleshy mouth
another mark on annual shirt about the thing killed
you I need nothing I love
last night, I need nothing I love
in the morning affected it to mean to beginning
does not fall sleeping does you,
you must about the whole thing seeing dream fleshy mouth
another mark on annual shirt about the thing killed
you I need nothing I love
last night, I need nothing I love
in the morning affected it to mean to beginning
I was lying awake at two in the morning, you know. in the town Goole, or Reddiheath i think somewhere like that. it doesn't matter. i think it was the light outside my window, either that or I have too many thoughts currently. the light outside my window makes everything look like a david lynch film, erstaz, sans people i guess. loneliest place in the world, just so you know, Reddiheath, two in the morning.
this town called beverly, which was lovely I guess. it was what I want,intimate, or at least as intimate as a town can be, there were cobblestones and this lincolnshire burr. I walked around with this three year old boy called joshy, who smelled like urine and could only say one word "NO" which was issued in short brisk and joyous announcements. he cried when I walked away from him, for at least an afternoon i discovered my paternal instincts. the only difficult bit, of course, was that women and I guess men assumed I was the father, and I was a pretty bad father effectively letting my unruly son lie on the floor and have effectively no control over him. still i got this like curious understanding look from attractive mothers of britain, who looked at me with weary but understanding eyes.
"you fucking idiot."
each word was drawn out, spoken in this melencholy jamaican-"brummie" hybrid, in a sonorous minor key. the other man remained silent. I couldn't see them, but I could hear the one man's voice as I lay down in my room. a disappointed voice.
this town called beverly, which was lovely I guess. it was what I want,intimate, or at least as intimate as a town can be, there were cobblestones and this lincolnshire burr. I walked around with this three year old boy called joshy, who smelled like urine and could only say one word "NO" which was issued in short brisk and joyous announcements. he cried when I walked away from him, for at least an afternoon i discovered my paternal instincts. the only difficult bit, of course, was that women and I guess men assumed I was the father, and I was a pretty bad father effectively letting my unruly son lie on the floor and have effectively no control over him. still i got this like curious understanding look from attractive mothers of britain, who looked at me with weary but understanding eyes.
"you fucking idiot."
each word was drawn out, spoken in this melencholy jamaican-"brummie" hybrid, in a sonorous minor key. the other man remained silent. I couldn't see them, but I could hear the one man's voice as I lay down in my room. a disappointed voice.
I walked to Natalie's house, well actually I got lost in a suburban hell where every street was named after an American state and I thought of the Neil Young quote that is on one of my teeshirts. Everyone seems so awkward when I say its a Neil Young quote, as if neil young is the worst thing in the world. Anyway the teeshirt says “everybody knows this is nowhere”, thats how that neighborhood felt even though I had been there so many times before. Sometimes everything feels so unfamiliar, like when I had sex with Natalie. I was in her bedroom, and it was so intimate and sensitive, without feeling anything, she bit my neck and I kissed her as we lay on her childhood bed in a room that felt like a hotel. I didn’t want to be inside her I didn’t want her warm body pressed against mine. I didn’t want the smell of condoms and semen, or the entwining after sex or the softness of her hair against me or her eyes looking at me.
There is advertising on the busride into the city. This poster says “master your life in one week.” On it there is a picture of a person on top of a mountain. Arms outstretched in triumph.
and she had her hair like some sort of sixties icon, it was I guess "strawberry blonde" like the boy Simon Riddell from my high school. I remember him describing his hair in those very words, as I guess you would if your hair was like that. like the Baldoventti painting. Apparently, a man can have blond hair but he is never a "blonde." She wore it piled over her head, it was carefully tied up behind and formed something almost unbearably perfect. I thought the style had died, and could only be utilised in novels by Murakami.
She sat next to me and was talking about how when she was my age, her friend could get front seat tickets to the Odeon theatre in central city Birmingham. From my research, and I have nothing at the moment but time to research, in the sixties Birmingham was the grimmest city in the world. She talked about how she was obssessed with soul music and had seen Smokey Robinson and Otis Redding live which was enviable enough.
then she said:
"I was in the front row for the Supremes,which was deeply exciting. there at the Odeon. Diana Ross with her hand, grabbed me out of my front row seat and danced with me on the stage. You know, her hand was small and claw like."
I don't think I have ever been so in love with anyone.
I walked up Worcester Boulevard at six to meet Frances, she was late. Little things like that I forgot in the seven months since I had a conversation with her, a normal conversation, a conversation that didn’t dissipate into me breaking down. To be honest, the conversation today dissipated at times, and I felt like some kind of natural disaster or something, a tidal wave or an earthquake, something powerful and horrible. I had forgotten how Frances was always late for things and would try and make up with it with her little laugh, and her eyes would look at you at it would be okay. I wished she had avoided eye contact, like the way she avoided talking about Sam/Richard/other guys. She has the most beautiful eyes, I guess I had forgotten them too.
Of fir trees to become by constant "gepflogenen" brewing,
heard never suggested, what you said,
enfurled in their tongue,
form the area for them,
shone like roofings of the electrical volatile colored lights,
he whisper for girls, not, the girls, whom you like,
enfurled in their tongue,
form the area for them,
shone like roofings of the electrical volatile colored lights,
he whisper for girls, not, the girls, whom you like,
I don’t know I guess the whole thing seems like a prepared script you know, this was just like a read through where nothing was new, nothing was beautiful, and nothing was resolved, I couldn’t pretend to be happy and I think she just felt awkward. She looked different, not her eyes, which I kept focusing on because I guess wasn’t prepared for the physical reality of Frances. She really has beautiful eyes, as I walked away from her down Worcester boulevard, they were all I could think about, well not all I could, but they sent me back where none of this happened. She pulled close to me and felt different and smelled different, the short dyed red hair and new body someone that is familiar but distant. I want it to be okay in my heart, in all of our hearts so much, but it just isn’t.
I chose to make the most of the slipped era, the long straightening silence between us formed at distance and indices at separate points of the arcade. Which is understandable of course, in your minor perfection in that one corner of the hall lined with it's patterned floortiles and bicycles. And I should have been embarrassed in that discomfort, but it has become so regular. An unending series of brief non encounters and mistimed glances. It is the same when I walk past the house on Madras street, sitting ungainly on its corner. Unprepossessing and painted brightly like Victorian houses were. I mean this was always the aspect denied by such house owners, how vile the aesthetics of that age were. Brocaded in chintz and emancipated by a room impossible to move in; crystal glass set, walnut side table dressed in lace cover, patterned carpet, patterned wallpaper and patterned clothing. And of course, I have grown to despise so much. And I had nothing but the best intentions, and you had your best lace on as you do. Queen Victoria in mourning.
The Queen turned mourning into the chief concern of her existence the next several years. The Prince's rooms in their residences were maintained exactly as he had them when he was alive. Her servants were instructed to bring hot water into his dressing room every day as they had formerly done for his morning shave. She had statues made of him, displayed mementos of his around the royal palaces, and she spent most of her time secluded in Windsor Castle or in Balmoral up in Scotland, where she had formerly spent so many happy times with her husband.
XIII
there are two dogs
and this is a lost weekend
for mount pleasant
as place and musical pseudonym for myself
i remember falling and chipping open my face
on the frost.
when I was six,
there was no blood on the frost.
sophie led to the death of our first cocker spaniel,
blood streaming down her face
from her nostril.
the cocker spaniel didn't look guilty.
omg!
as you were telling me secrets
their buttoned silences and grim era
pressed against them,
(like in a car when your teeshirt becomes too hot from the sunlight and it has become so sweaty that it is sticking to your skin and it doesn't matter because there is some promise of teenage dreaming, deep chordal gesturing but really just a two note structure or of chrome futures with your portfolio poised on good third quarterly returns, of crisp business thursday sharpened on recession proofing. But it doesn't necessarily have to be solely a car situation, it could be anything presumably just as long as the temperature maintains this predecember blisser period heat average.)
I got so tired that I just sort of looked at the railway tracks.
new lovers for streak free weekends,
because I know you hate it when your makeup slides down your face
making those trails of wet makeup,
so your sullen face is transformed into a tragic sullen face.
you should not sleep in.
because I know you hate it when your makeup slides down your face
making those trails of wet makeup,
so your sullen face is transformed into a tragic sullen face.
you should not sleep in.
there are two dogs
and this is a lost weekend
for mount pleasant
as place and musical pseudonym for myself
i remember falling and chipping open my face
on the frost.
when I was six,
there was no blood on the frost.
sophie led to the death of our first cocker spaniel,
blood streaming down her face
from her nostril.
the cocker spaniel didn't look guilty.
when I was walking home I walked into a prostitute
I didn't actually walk into her
but she loomed close and her eyes looked so diminutive
as if they weren't really there.
she was extremely close and it was quiet.
I was licking my lips.
which was "unfortunate";
implying firstly that I was interesting in pursuing her in some sort of business deal involving sexual intercourse
(!)
secondly that I was depraved
(!)
thirdly that I had a dirty mouth.
(!)
I started humming to myself after I walked past her.
that two seconds seemed to go on FOREVER
I didn't actually walk into her
but she loomed close and her eyes looked so diminutive
as if they weren't really there.
she was extremely close and it was quiet.
I was licking my lips.
which was "unfortunate";
implying firstly that I was interesting in pursuing her in some sort of business deal involving sexual intercourse
(!)
secondly that I was depraved
(!)
thirdly that I had a dirty mouth.
(!)
I started humming to myself after I walked past her.
that two seconds seemed to go on FOREVER
and I am slimming down for the summer
my thighs are looking perfect
conditioning my chest hair and all that,
for the carefree summer look
my thighs are looking perfect
conditioning my chest hair and all that,
for the carefree summer look
So much engagement you know. And of course, so much dancing lately. And Hannah asked about my dancing, and I said I danced "like I meant it." And how when Ella pulled out a pair of shoes, in her cape which was, you know, a mistake I felt so tired. A mistake because it was in that patterned Victorian thing, early Victorian like moving out of the Hanover period into this pan european/global empire of desperate colonial abysses. And I had learned too much about the colonies, its bacchanalia and its liberties. faire passer son brevet colonial; as if every colonist was going for sodomy according to the french, discovering themselves south of the equator. And I miss you, and your gestures and delicate procedures. Your hour of getting ready. And spending too long in a mourning, and a permanent exile. The small privileges, the silencing of my voice, the anxiety, the delight; when I told Sebastian I was quitting he seemed to mock concern but I see no point. And when Sophia took me across the town, the conversation seemed free and easy and would that it was always the same. And Richard, and Richard, and Shannon, and Frase are leaving and in their place, autumn? And I am worried about the complacency, and I don't really like the social things. And I don't like forcing conversations. And all the fragmentation never forms anything final, anything definite. Like how Bella promised she could be so much for me and how I refused to believe it, refused to belay any confidence in her. Like how Emma lay in my bed and proceeded to insult me all night. And of course I am disappointed. A slipped era of dark nights. My room is one piece fuller with the tropical landscape propped horizontally so that the pacific ocean would pour across the carpet, of frustrations, of misguided intentions. How she said she just wanted to be married, and want blonde hair. I think about Queen Victoria like all the time, especially how depressing those Victorian interiors were and how this must have heightened her sense of loneliness, betrayal? And her walking in the fog that stretched all across scotland, stone houses darkening in the cold.
It was Saturday, composed of all it's fragmented parts - silences, indifferent sunlit expanses stretching through the afternoon, and night all quivering from the last of my sisters gin. Lying in my bed with the iris patterned duvet and inevitable room collapsing in on me, angled ceiling of the post tuscan modern apartment complex imposing itself in my "waiting for a text from you." Which didn't come. Both the collapse and the text. But of course anything could have happened that night, or any night (apart from Sunday which is definitely the worst day of any week). When I went around to her house, which was the last time I will see that house with the wooden floorboards and whitewashed walls and living room situated at the back of the house as an afterthought, everything had gone except for her things. Her things wrapped in their plastic on the hangar, her shoes in their boxes, her small bookshelf in white cubes on the ground with it's small inarticulate collection of books. The sort of books one presents to someone, not the sort of books you would derive any sort of depth from. And my friend said that her shallowness was so thorough that it could be confused with depth, I liked that quote just like I like all the quotes about shallowness "only the shallow know themselves" " if you wish to drown, don't torture yourself in shallow water". Of course she wasn't shallow, or at least I never tortured myself with any deeper insight into her because she remained so guarded and remote. Which is at least a strategy that you could pursue if you wanted? But how I wanted insights all through the early summer, how when I touched her in the brief moments when I said goodbye after exhausting myself in frustration when seeing her - I could feel so much impossible distance between us. And she was so insistent on me coming to Europe with her, and going on adventures. But when I replied in my clearest possible terms of how I really just wanted her as I lay in repose in my terrible shuttering drunken pose, she replied that "it made no sense." Which was either a calculated strategy of naivety, straight naivety with no moderating calculation, or "closure" because the text was so legible. As it was, I wanted to spread her perfume around the room, I wanted to swim out as far as we could in the pacific ocean, I wanted to take her auburn hair and have it as object and subject. Instead Saturday closed in on itself, all options exhausted, and I was left with Sunday, the worst day of the week.
(Joanna said she felt so much older than her friends, because she is 23 years old and married and is considering settling and buying a house and other adult signifiers. That was later. As I watched the projected image from the DLP settling on the screen, all hazed and washed out like nostalgia and the word is a formation of a Greek compounds, consisting of νόστος, nóstos, "returning home", and ἄλγος, álgos, "pain" or "ache", the ache of returning home as past becomes some sort of home to reside in even though, I feel the present with Joanna more than our pasts, pl.), the images of models on what could be the cinema's least successful film this year, Picture Me, I thought that Joanna looked so similar to the girl smiling. As I watched the film from above, all flickering shadows on ext back wall of the opposite cinema, and like an emptied out version of that painting of the experiment on a bird with an air pump, that condensed quality of light, sort of dutch school informed but not really, me by the projector, how perfectly happy the girl in the documentary was as she laughed with her nokia cellphone on the screen projected but almost as if a gauze had been placed over, as the New York light filmed on under performing digital video camera had rendered unsatisfied and indifferent. But she was so happy. And Joanna seems happy. It was silent as I watched the film alone upstairs, as it is always is. Afterwards, Leonie and Joanna were texting me where they were and how I should come and how I replied on my cellphone as it was on my way home and then they replied on their cellphone which number came up unfamiliar on my phone and how I talked to Raewyn, whose hands were shaking from fear and whose hair curls frizzy and grey around her ears, and then, you know like later, we were having this lemon surprise cake and everything formed perfectly as the conversation and coffee and cider and cake lilted and twisted the room around. And we talked about nostalgia and I thought about growing older and I thought about the Greeks, and lots of things I guess.
Barry said to me, "it feels like autumn today" and he was right. the air was cold and I put my hands into the pockets of the only pair of jeans I wear. They, like the weather, had become grayer in England. I guess once they were black, they are a remnant. We looked out across the suburban brick, all silent and remote. I said to Barry, "yes it does, I guess that ends the summer."
