The window had been painted shut, but we released it from its prison and it thanked us by carrying the swirls of smoke over the river. I lobbed the glass I was holding out into the brightening gloom and heard it tinkle on the ground below.
it’s a nice day my companion remarked as he sat perched on the ash ridden ledge.
lets go for a walk
yeah?
yeah the butt of the cigarette arced the same route as the glass.
He returned later with three guys, each smiling through the exhaustion and drink. We ran to the park, leaping over bollards and spinning on our heels everybody wake up (wake up) everybody everybody wake up it’s time to get down echoing from our throats. An abandoned play park was our first destination with frosted slides that catapulted us across the ground. A cordoned off slide tempted us with its serpentine coils and we dared the ice glazed and chilling ladders to throw ourselves down its black hole. The slipping and sliding led us to a deserted skate park with names emblazoned on the smooth concrete as we rolled and ran and flipped and laid with our backs in puddles watching yellow cigarette smoke framed by blue sky and laughing horsely with every utter of ladies. There was a fountain that sunk my ankles in water floating with cigarette butts and my friend’s legs dangled over nothingness as his fingers gripped an ornate cherub. The sun was rising as we pulled each other up to the upper most boughs of a solid oak tree. The sky grew a violent orange and we laid back in the branches and took silhouettes. serenity someone said from within the tree, beautiful another voice chorused, ladies the third one uttered and we all fell into laughter, my knuckles dirty with fear of falling dying from laughter i said, holding on for dear life is there a better way to go? and then someone said ladies and I would’ve died right then if it weren’t for them below me, holding my legs while I barreled off the trunk.
And we headed back. The sun beat across our faces as we walked in our line, in our troop. I checked my watch and announced that it was 7am on the dot, guys, 7am and we leaned on the bridge and talked with the sun in our laughs and the promise of Guitar Hero to keep us awake to last us across the road.
… ladies
So here it is in front of me; a perfectly sweet, crisp, clean word document. It took me only a moment to open it up from the shortcut in my Start menu, with only thirty seconds passing between the final stroke of my double click to the final built application that is Microsoft Word Processor. Thirty seconds isn’t long. It’s the length of one advert. It’s the time it takes to walk up a flight of stairs. It’s the time that a lecturer takes to walk into the room and set his briefcase on the table. It’s the time it takes to melt frozen bread in an 800 megawatt microwave.
Thirty seconds, not much time at all.
Yet, still I find myself tapping a pen with frustration on the edge of laptop as it loads up, each agonising second following the one previous with a malicious curling grin. By the time the word document opens with fingers prying recently de-clothed ass cheeks to receive my input, I can’t. My fingers have fell flaccid against the keyboard and even through the mind is willing, the flesh is not obeying. In thirty seconds I turn from spurting flowing ink to nursing my impotent pen and wailing softly into my chest. I’m welling up inside, fit to burst with need and desire and wanting, but nothing is coming out. The want is there, but nothing is turning me on enough to satisfy my needs.
The word document is cute, with her hitched up skirt and underwear round her ankles, but her hidden face is harsh and ugly and I can’t help but remember it when I’m using her. The internet is grateful, but hating at the same time. She’s a whore with a big ass and inviting stockings and a face that’ll either make you orgasm on site or throw up over her thighs. Photoshop would make me come within seconds if it weren’t for my inability to undo her bra. A videocamera winks at me as I ponder these, and I know that she might be the one to fill my head with swirling purple clouds if I could bother to court her and make the effort.
So I take cigarettes and write notes on them, I scrawl huge messages on the sides of bathroom walls, I send postcards addressed to the post office marked with unintelligible words or pictures. I’m looking for a new medium to invade, a new girl to fuck and satisfy this overwhelming feeling of inspiration but no material to fuck her with, no dick to slap a condom on and lube up with a patient, seedy grin. And fuck me I need to do something.
So the figure sits peering behind glass that clears the world of a never-realised clouded vision. Rims shine in soft glares of streetlights that slink out from shadows. The clouds were hardly noticed until now, until the needle clarity showed them in all their incapacitating glory. Signs glow with unearthly certainty, their messages blatantly obvious when before they were shrouded in velvet smooth thickness. Previously imperceptible details cascade amongst what was once mundane and beauty is found where ugliness resided. Though opposites rule some as sweet perfumes are turned to hideous odours that permeate the base elements with irreversible consequences. Shadows lurk more prominent now where before they stood solitary in their mystery. Death is visible in every fold, in every vector, in every pixel of the human soul. The diamond cut clearness stabs at soft, round pupils and the first battle of a war is fought on hemispheres of thought. Dizziness infects travel and vanity is affected by shards of acuity that would otherwise sleep quietly in the recesses of the mind. So the epiphany of vision is removed and it is hidden, and the clouded world resumes its rightful stature. But too much has been seen, too much has been envisioned. And now it’ll never be the same again.
And that’s the story of how I found my glasses.
Inspiration running riot but no-
materialstimethought
The need to do something anything now then later now is overpowering and debilitating. So research investigations study seek new and exciting ways to haga lo que usted desea hacer, para llenar el vacío que se está ampliando con maldad inmensurable. And it is found. It is found but it’s-
unaccessiblehardtoohardgoddamntoohard
But the want to do it is too much, the need is too much, so fantasies form behind misty eyes and thoughts latch on to inspiration and stomachs rush with oh god yes yes it will be EL SORPRENDER but no wait maybe no no no what a shame.
You’ve given up.
Hot damn.
And the slow sodden sinking feeling slips in as I give up yet another essay. This is the third instance that I’ve given up on writing an essay and decided to hand it in a day late and take the percentage hit, and it’s the third time I’ve thought seriously on giving all this up and returning to a full time job. It wasn’t bad where I worked, just horribly horribly boring. I’d hike in for 9am everyday with blood filling my shoes to sit for seven and a half hours (thirty minutes for lunch, not a minute more or a minute less) and blog. That’s right, I’d earn £6 an hour with bonuses by sitting back at my computer and blogging. Sure, I’d occasionally have to do some work - I’d click here and there, type in a few numbers, send an email or two, and I was done. My workload for the day consisted of a cumulative amount of about two hours work. The rest of the time I was free to do what I pleased. And blogging pleased me.
Which is probably why I’m, right now, neglecting my paper and typing this. There’s three minutes left before the midnight deadline hits and there’s no way I can get it done. I blame myself really, since I am the only person to blame. Bad time management. Not starting it sooner. Going away for the weekend. Spending my entire day yesterday drinking and blogging (on my various other blogs, oh ho ho how I’m mysterious). Same old stuff. Even today I spent about half an hour watching Kings of Power and Dead Fantasy II when I should’ve been doing what I was supposed to hand in five minutes ago. But they were both awesome movies. Like, really awesome.
But now I get to sleep. I get to kick myself. And I get to work on this thing tomorrow before taking a big wopping 10% slam for being late. I love the subjects, and I love what they’re teaching me, but goddammit if I just wished I was good enough in my writing to live off it.
Home is a sticky floor and pictures of a stripper spreading cream over the wall by slapping her ass. The faint smell of pizza and cigarettes. Weed and plastic cups strewn over tables and cocktails in the carpet. Home is the deep crevases of a familiar bed with soft sheets and clothes hid under the dusty frame. The countless sheafs of notes, letters, stories littering the desk, the lava lamp hidden in the cupboard, the fedora hat perched precariously on the edge of the bookcase.
Or is it?
Could it be that home is somewhere that is not, indeed, home? Perhaps home is within the base of an improvised chocolate cake, snugly squashed between the honey and maple syrup. Or maybe it’s between the cushions of a deep white couch with a delusioned budgie chirping human overhead. On a park bench, pondering future hispanic lovers, tragic car crashes and experimental lesbianism. No, wait. If it was anywhere then it’d be in the folds of cookie-crumbed sheets with fingers grasping whiter-than-white knuckles and faces falling gently asleep on shoulders.
Home seriously appears to be where your heart is.
“I’m here to deliver your new bin.”
“Oh. Ok. Just so you know, I don’t live here, I’m just sitting in for the owner.”
“Now it’s just over here, you’d better put your number on it so you know it’s yours.”
“Yeah, ok, but I don’t live here.”
“So here it is, where do you want us to put it?”
“Well, I don’t live here.”
“Oh. We’ll just leave it here then.”
“Ok. What’s it for?”
Pause.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s black. What’s it for?”
“You open the lid. Put rubbish in. It’s a wheelie bin.”
“Yes. I can see that. But what’s it for? There’s green for normal, blue for recycling, brown for garden. What’s black for?”
Pause.
“For your rubbish.”
“Yeah, but what kind?”
“Oh. Oh! I see what you mean. It’s for your normal rubbish. It’s the same as a green bin.”
“Ok.”
“I thought you didn’t live here.”
“I don’t.”
“Oh. Cheerio.”
“Bye.”
When people see my tattoo, I tell them I’m a writer. When they ask me why it’s a quill and not a pen, I tell them that I don’t want to write. I want to fly.
Usually, I’m quite an opinionated person. Most things concerning life, the universe, and everything I’ve got an opinon on. But sometimes I don’t. Sometimes when votes are tallied and people take sides, I abstain. Yes. Abstain. It doesn’t mean that I don’t know either side of the debate, and it doesn’t mean that I can’t argue for either way, it just means that I don’t care.
Some people don’t understand this though. They don’t understand that caring isn’t a necessary thing in life. I don’t care about global warming, I don’t care about endangered species, I don’t care about the treatment of chickens. I don’t care. Say it with me.
So when a lobby of eleven people vote that they agree that protesting is worthwhile, zero vote against and I vote to abstain, it does not mean that I’m slow or confused or retarded. I just don’t care, but I feel the need to convey that I don’t care enough to vote because I think that debating about the power of protesting is a fucking waste of time.
But they don’t understand. Not at all.
“There were dwarves dressed as pirates coming out of the wardrobe!”
And thus begins a conversation with Carol-Louise.
She’s talking about Time Bandits a bizarre film starring both John Cleese and Sean Connery. She is on my right, and Robert is on my left (who quite intuitively recognised himself in my alphabet land parody) reading through a giant textbook of short stories and scrawling into a worn notebook. Carol-Louise is fingering through the 19th century book of French plays that I gave her for her birthday on Saturday. Mike’s birthday was the day after (not entirely sure what’s in store for him yet) and my brothers birthday is this Thursday where he will receive £50 worth of dollars for his trip to New York this summer.
As such, I’m relatively broke. But Carol-Louise is feeding me pancakes and cold potato scones so all is well.
I’m seeing Charlotte this weekend - finally - after just over a month of being without her. Her parents have offered an extensive menu to partake in, but they make good peanut butter sandwhiches so I’m happy either way. And the most AMAZING coffee. And free beer. It’s fun.
I’ve almost got the hang of whistling through my fingers. I can make the slightest hint of a high pitched whistle before it becomes overrun with rushing wind. Just there I managed to make a slightly louder whistle than normal. My list of useless tricks to learn will soon be lessened! After that I’ll learn to walk on my hands, and then that’s all the easier stuff out the way. The next step is to buy a set of lockpicks and wreak havoc with my front door.
To be continued…
