i got home and walked up the stairs and she came out of the shower still damp, timing of the gods. i pushed her against the door and kissed her. if i hadn't had my hands full with a red velvet embroidered bedspread and an oil painting of a sofa i would have pulled open her dressing gown and pushed her back into the shower. she pushed me away and laughed and said: you're drunk you crazy, and escaped downstairs.

two other people said the same thing immediately afterwards when they saw me.

however, i am absolutely, deadly, seriously, 100% certain that i'm not drunk.

i like to sit on the floor best, but sometimes i have guests who like sitting like european people do. i'm not about to clutter my floor and cover up my afghan silk qilim (a gift from a certain shady colonel-saheb, colonel of what we're not sure, but that's another story) with bulky armchairs. but now i've at least indulged them with an abstract painting of a sofa which i found in the street.

Frontier Psychiatrist

Stella Maris

The one notebook that I cannot lose...

Having recently lost three, from my collection of manymany; but three I would rather have kept. This one lives in an electronic cloud, though, and it would take an accident of rather cataclysmic proportions to wipe it out.

I should have £20,000 on my account, even allowing for the extravagant spending. I have about £100, and my shoes are wearing out. I should feel strong and walk proud, muscles in my arms like bundles of electric cable. I walk in a chaotic shambling quick-march like an exhausted soldier on Pervitin,[redacted]

I know things I shouldn't know, things that would certainly, from certain quarters, merit a quick pistol-shot to keep hidden forever. I witness, from a privileged spot, stories that may or may not make the history books; histories which, it suddenly occurs to me with an unpleasant jolt, I am supposed to be writing.

We have secrets, but secrets we cannot sell. [redacted]
The woman I loved, I realise now that she's gone, was never really ever there. She was a distant fantasy, sporadically reified, who I waited for too long.

It is the end of another day. The light was beautiful today, a peculiar incandescence suffusing everything with a golden glow. I lay on my bed, laptop on my lap, displaying the draft of a report that [redacted]

My faithful readers...

I am consumed with guilt.  You've reminded me-- oh, it gnaws at me in every waking moment-- that I have failed you, utterly and absolutely.  It would be a praiseworthy action for you to leave me festering in well-deserved pain.  Say the word, and I will remove a bodily organ in apology.

Txt msg blues

The crash of thunder has died away, the smell of electricity fades from the air. I am spent from climaxing across the voluptuous dark sky in lightning bolts. The evening sun re-emerges and banishes my occult fever. My eyes flicker like fluorescent strip lights when the grid voltage is too low, or like will-o'-the-wisp swamp lights dancing like sick midges.

There is no return. Nothing is true; there is no day of reckoning. Forgetfulness lurks in the dead tall reeds, the waters lap darkly, the oars creak, the fish neither care nor remember. The rain begins again.

My words are cheap opium dreams, stolen from lost travelers seeking nothing but the warmth of a ragged blanket for another shivering night on another endless road, wracked by the lonely lust of devildom - dust and spiders and spider venom.

“That famous writer’s block is a myth as far as I’m concerned. I think bad writers must have a great difficulty writing. They don’t want to do it. They have become writers out of reasons of ambition. It must be a great strain to them to make marks on a page when they really have nothing much to say, and don’t enjoy doing it. I’m not so sure what I have to say but I certainly enjoy making sentences.”
— Gore Vidal (RIP)

I can't seem to settle down anywhere

'Where are you from?'
'What do you mean?'
'I mean where were you brought up?'
'Terminal 1, Frankfurt-am-Main airport. And we lived for a while in Dubai Terminal 3 as well.'

Recommended

Lazy has begun adding the occasional new post, again.... realgem endures, yet...

But there is other work to be done... In the meantime, may I leave you with documentary-maker Adam Curtis's wonderful blog, The Medium and the Message, and its epic and unusual history of foreign involvement in the country of Afghanistan, Kabul: City Number One, rich with unknown history, supplemented by clips of rare footage from the depths of the BBC's archives.

(It occurs to me that Afghanistan, appropriately enough somehow for a country which in many ways occupies a different historical era from most of the readers of this blog, has its very own time zone at +4h30 GMT.)

job description

stationed behind a protective sangaar of empty beer bottles

or a lone whiskey glass standing sentry

in the bar over the valley, nestled between the two peaks. un sitio muy defendable, cuando llega el apocalipsis.

church bell begins as soon as i start to write. maybe sounds more like a gong, or someone banging a piece of scrap metal with a hammer.

-reasonable knowledge of matters afghanistan linguistic, political, historical, social and military


-plausible written expression in english


-no objection to ocasionally smuggling small quantities of illegal materials or incriminating documents through dubai airport or illegal amounts of currency through london or european airports


-willingness to risk life, limb or liberty for the chance of travel, possibly adventure and a near-nominal remuneration. generous expenses account, on the other hand.


-knowledge of farsi, pashtu, urdu desirable

dubai airport

the only reason i mention dubai so much, despite it being a despicable place, is because i have done so much writing while trapped in its airport. i met a zimbabwean with a revoked passport who had been stuck in there for a month, once.

i like the airport. i like airports and train and bus stations in general, the sensation of being an in-between place, people from across the human spectrum going to other places. dubai airport, in particular, apart from the free wifi and cheap duty free, has the added hidden buzz of spies, businessmen, 'consultants', 'contractors', mercenaries, strange people on inscrutable missions; snatches of overheard muttered conversations in the so-called irish pub rich with obscure references to things most people don't know or don't want to know about. elegantly suited corporate travellers , arabs in dazzling white gowns wearing backward baseball caps, balochis in sandals and shalwar qamiz and cloth bundles of luggage tied up with rope, young indian men in flares and shirts open at the neck, dazzlingly beautiful arab girls in tight jeans and jingling with gold and platinum jewellery.

a kuwaiti girl with the offhand manner of command of some sheikh's or emir's or prince's daughter ordering ice cream in the food court, sitting at the table across from me, leaning back to stretch her back and shoulders and show off her ohmigod beautiful tits for me, the wonderful kind of departure lounge flirtation that can never go anywhere.

huge black guy with the manner of a marine sgt in a dyncorp t-shirt, herding a crowd of filipino and bangla contract workers for a big fob somewhere off a bus onto an afghan-bound flight, lining them all up and scanning them all with a handheld barcode reader.

i live in terror of benzodiazepine withdrawal. opiates are gently releasing their hold on my cells, but at some point i will have to stop taking the calmants (and the forgetamines and the talktoomuchatives).

i am still in the room, listening to the voice droning on outside

"nutting is a very wonderful english thing.

king harold nutted prince william or whatever he was. that's the real story of what went on in hastings. and then they took out an arrow and shot him. but first he nutted him.

you couldn't nut anybody. but the mentalist could. he could nut someone."

The old people in the ancient village (which huddles from the winds in between the two tallest peaks) have tottered up the hill to howl at the moon. A drunk plays mournful blues harp in the street, like a film noir cliche. I can't sleep.

"I was here when the ameobas started, I spoke to them, I've been here millions of years.
I killed my brother and my sister. I cut out their hearts cause I knew that was the best way.
No I could never do that. i could never become a fly. I was buzzing around the kitchen earlier."

(Well, okay, but look out for hot light bulbs and candles, I say)

(I think we're having a fly moment here. we have no way of knowing that we haven't been sitting here miserably drunk forever. just like a fly circling endlessly and aimlessly, forgetting everything that happened a few seconds ago)

I don't really speak Farsi; however, I am fluent in a language of my own invention which, on occasion, is mutually comprehensible with farsi.

Democracy is another religion like the universal and catholic Church of the Middle Ages, when the black death raged across Europe and strange apocalyptic sects wandered the land, demented with fear and ergotism, lashing themselves with whips and appealing to heaven, praying to God to save them. Reminds me awful lot of certain futile protests, with people shouting themselves hoarse, as if only they shout the right slogan with enough fervor something will change. What difference????? Neither will change anything.

At least not until there are cars upside down burning, molotov cocktails impacting on police APCs.

"Political power grows from the barrel of a gun." (Mao Tse Tung)

"Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win." (Sun Tzu)

the writing life

it is the same everywhere. the forests are under assault. the last remotenesses crumble.

and what is this constant feed of information doing to me? doing to you?

new types of conceptual filters... (that is why so much of history seems so insane; seen through their conceptual filters at the time, it made sense.... perhaps...) new types of conceptual filters for a new type of world. 

the ability to ignore has never been so important.

writing leads to discoveries, and 'words build bridges into unexplored regions'[quote a. hitler] (both for the reader and the writer, the speaker and the listener), apart from its ability to bring pleasure, wonder or emotion to whoever should read it.

and then why disvalue it so much? that with all this staring into glowing rectangles, not even an hour, a stingy half-an-hour given to the art? cause 'i practised by art til i'm blue in the face, man...' ('my heart's on the plate...') [roots manuva, chin high]

it's still a typewriter. with a few little extras. don't forget your origins.

Lost in La Mancha again

Enter The Dragon. Later, Enter Another

By Lavie Tidhar

 

Back again and then

[panic stalks even the bare hills here
it never quite leaves me]

Lazy never continued the story he began with 'The Return', below...

It was tapped out in the freezing cold glorious glittering sun and crystal sky Kabul dawn (preternaturally clear, for one morning the smog and smoke has blown away and the far high mountains are visible clad in snow) shivering in the office, twisted and drunk and two days and nights sleepless through three countries.

The dynamics of the situation are...

Well.

Stay tuned. Maintain radio contact. Keep a low profile. Practise all relevant anti-surveillance techniques. Stay calm, and never admit to anything. Don't worry, we will meet again.

"خانه دوست كجاست؟" در فلق بود كه پرسيد سوار.
آسمان مكثي كرد.
رهگذر شاخه نوري كه به لب داشت به تاريكي شن‌ها بخشيد
و به انگشت نشان داد سپيداري و گفت:


"نرسيده به درخت،
كوچه باغي است كه از خواب خدا سبزتر است
و در آن عشق به اندازه پرهاي صداقت آبي است
مي‌روي تا ته آن كوچه كه از پشت بلوغ، سر به در مي‌آرد،
پس به سمت گل تنهايي مي‌پيچي،
دو قدم مانده به گل،
پاي فواره جاويد اساطير زمين مي‌ماني
و تو را ترسي شفاف فرا مي‌گيرد.
در صميميت سيال فضا، خش‌خشي مي‌شنوي:
كودكي مي‌بيني
رفته از كاج بلندي بالا، جوجه بردارد از لانه نور
و از او مي‌پرسي
خانه دوست كجاست."

“Where is the friend’s house?” asked the horseman just at dawn.
The heavens paused.
A wayfarer took the bright branch from his lips,
conferred it on the darkness of the sands,
pointed with his finger to a poplar tree and said,
“Just before that tree
there is a garden path greener than God’s dreams.
In it there is love as wide as the blue wings of true friendship.
You go on to the end of the path that takes up again
just beyond maturity,
then turn toward the flower of loneliness.
Two steps before the flower,
stop at the eternal fountain of earthly myth.
There a transparent terror will seize you,
and in the sincerity of the streaming heavens
you will hear a rustling.
High up in a pine tree,
you will see a child
who will lift a chick out of a nest of light.
Ask him,
“Where is the friend’s house?”

"Well, wishing you godspeed..."

"Godspeed? What speed is that?"

"Oh, about 120 mph or so..."

(Approximately the terminal velocity of a human body in free-fall)

oh dear, blogger has screwed up my lovely template somehow while updating to this new interface. both interface and template served me perfectly well for years and years now, who knows what is going on...

in haste... but realgem is still here!

this reality thing still feels like a cutting knife, sometimes, with nothing to hide behind

The Return

for many of us, all roads have led to norway.


that is an oblique tangent on which to start the story.


tomorrow: remember to buy soap, a good knife, some alprazolam, and a surge-protected 4-way extension lead.


hahahahahhahaa!


let’s start with something more sickly, sickly familiar, then. waking up at 0600 after a horrible sleepless night in deep dark, still distinctly withdrawally, forcing myself out into the pre-dawn black chill of winter london with nothing, not even a valium to take the edge off...


no, wait a second, we’ve heard this one before. i think.


some of the parameters are different, though. i would like to think.


the extraction operation begins with 2 large cans of monster energy drink, a quarter of vodka, and finishing off the thai and the moroccan in between bursts of frantic packing, phoning, organising, tying up loose ends in a desperate rushed fumble.


fast forward 28 hours and four time zones or so in a blur. (i get the emergency exit seat on the emirates B777-300, giving me all the leg-room, and a pretty and chatty slovakian air hostess sitting opposite me for take-off, before she gets up to keep the passengers fed and me supplied with magical endless absolut miniature bottles.)


dubai. i am sitting in a bar half-way up a reproduction in pale yellowish stone of the great pyramid - complete with giant statues, hieroglyphs and glittering pharaonic gold - only better, because it has terraces with palm-shaded multi-level swimming pools with swim-up bars set into the side. fans of peacock feathers wave mechanically overhead to stir the cool air and eddies of cigarette smoke inside.


i am drinking what turns out to be one of several hideously over-priced vodka tonics. i haven’t slept, and my foot still taps convulsively occasionally. i am waiting for a visa. nervously. i wonder if they will take notice at the consulate that i have travelled many times before to afghanistan, but on a different nationality passport. whether they found it curious that i ticked the box saying i had never applied for an afghan visa before but addressed the clerk in dari.


...


[to be continued. we are another 28 hours along now, and despite my best efforts to bludgeon my consciousness into a blissful coma, still sleep has continued to elude me]

sorry i haven't been writing.

a lot of the parameters have changed.

i'm trying to find the big story

others are looking for it too

(if you are browsing idly for something interesting to read, the labels feature might be instructive as to what this has all been about)

oh, who knows about anything

this is a serious document

today, I met a librarian of jihad

He holds him with his skinny hand,
"There was a ship," quoth he.
'Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!'
Eftsoons his hand dropped he.

Chief Mess Officer's log:

Adrift off Looe, gentle swell. Crackle of West Country voices over the VHF. Attempting to cook a meal for three crew on gently rocking small gas stove. Gentle breaths of breeze strong enough to blow out a small flame but not strong enough to sail under.

"Food will be ready in three-and-a-half or seven minutes exactly."

"In three-and-a-half or seven minutes exactly?"

"It's the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. While the lid is on, the notional food inside exists in a state of quantum uncertainty. It is only when I remove the lid that the quantum waveform collapses into a definite state..."

We have been becalmed out here all day and are probably delirious with hunger and sun.

Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.

"Oh shit! I forgot to put in the Higgs bosons! They could ripple back through time to before when I started cooking, and cooking time might increase to theoretical infinity. We might be stuck in a quantum time loop, just like in Dr Who... We're really fucked now..."

Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.

"Oh good. I have removed the lid, and the rice has collapsed into a... into a 'Mexican risotto-type thing' quantum state. I have hereby prepared a delicious meal, and disproved all that pseudo-scientific gibber in Dr Who as well. As Chief Mess Officer, it is naturally within my mandate to conduct physics experiments on the gas stove."

Lazy, now dubbed 'Whippet', is set to running errands around in the dinghy, when he can spare the time from putting out nets surreptitiously for mullet and wow, jackpot, even bass...

Halfway across Falmouth harbour he notices the water in the boat is almost up to knee-level and there is definitely more of it than there was. Then the outboard sputters and dies.

His unfortunate passenger is set to bailing frantically while he phones shore. "Um... is there a bung missing here that you forgot to tell me about?" - "No." - "Well, we're shipping water awfully fast. Did Wayne fill the petrol up like he said he would when he borrowed it last time?" - "Um, I don't know. Quite possibly not, knowing him..." There is laughter at the other end of the line as he rings off.

The water is about an inch from the gunwales. Lazy looks up, and a brilliant double rainbow has appeared, almost incandescent across a moody, glowering sky.

And God said:"This is the sign of the covenant which I make between Me and you,
and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations: I set My rainbow in the cloud, and it shall be for the sign of the covenant between Me and the earth. It shall be, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the rainbow shall be seen in the cloud; and I will remember My covenant which is between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh; the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. (Genesis 9:12-15)

He sighs heavily, gets the oars out, and sets to rowing, hard. His passenger is bailing - a panicking man with a bucket is better than any pump when the water's rising - and we reach the mud, thank God it's low tide, just in time.

Lazy's passenger stalks off in a rage, convinced this was an incredibly unfunny practical joke played on them by "Captain Blight", and he is left alone with a heavy swamped boat and no outboard, and mystified and worried about the source of the leak. Surely he hasn't somehow accidentally holed the boat that Captain Blight borrowed from the old gentleman? No, that's impossible.

There is a little bit of petrol in a bottle marked 'meths' under the sail in the dinghy. Lazy fills the outboard and shoves the boat off, prays and starts the outboard. Holding the tiller with one hand and working the boatpump with the other, he heads back across the harbour and into the cove and creek.

He just makes it to the other side, ramming the boat into the low-tide mud shore, again with the water lapping at an inch from the rail, pulls her ashore, drags her up dry. Water jets out of a little hole aft where the bung is missing.

Captain Blight is kind enough to provide dry clothes and sherry.

"...and as we were there with a dead outboard, sinking, I was thinking..."

"You were thinking: 'It's not my fault!' " interrupts Captain Blight, laughing.

"...I looked at the sky, and there was this double rainbow, and I thought, well, if I'm going down, at least it's a beautiful day for it."

A near-disaster averted. I am pleased to note that Lazy seemed to enjoy every minute of it, but I am not so sure about his unfortunate passenger.

It is utterly mystifying why it all should have happened in the first place. Bungs aren't supposed to just fall out as there is water pressure keeping them in.

"I suspect..." I am saying later.

"You suspect skulduggery. You suspect - Wayneduggery," says the malung, who won't talk to Lazy any more, also due to a later boat-related incident.

ستاروں سے آگے جہاں اور بھی ہیں
ابھی عشق کے امتحاں اور بھی ہیں
تہی زندگی سے نہیں یہ فضائیں
یہاں سینکڑوں کارواں اور بھی ہیں
قناعت نہ کر عالمِ رنگ و بُو پر
چمن اور بھی، آشیاں اور بھی ہیں
اگر کھو گیا اک نشیمن تو کیا غم
مقاماتِ آہ و فغاں اور بھی ہیں
تو شاہیں ہے ، پرواز ہے کام تیرا
ترے شامنے آسماں اور بھی ہیں
اسی روز و شب میں الجھ کر نہ رہ جا
کہ تیرے زمان و مکاں اور بھی ہیں
گئے دن کہ تنہا تھا میں انجمن میں
یہاں اب مرے رازداں اور بھی ہیں 

Sitaron se aage jahan aur bhi hain
Abhi ishq ke imtehan aur bhi hain
Tahi zindagi se nahin ye fizayen
Yahan siakdon karwaan aur bhi hain
Khana’at na kar aalam-e-rang-o-bu par
Chaman aur bhi aashiyaan aur bhi hain
Agar kho gaya ek nasheman to kya ghum
Maqmat-e-aah-o-fughaan aur bhi hain
Tu shaheen hai parvwaaz hai kaam tera
Tere saamne aasmaan aur bhi hain
Isi roz-o-shab main ulajh kar na rah ja
Ke tere zameen par makaan aur bhi hain
Gaye din ke tanha tha main anjuman mein
Yahaan ab mere raazdaan aur bhi hain

Beyond the stars there are worlds more
Our quest yet has more tests to pass
This existence alone does not matter
There are boundless journeys more
Do not rest on what you have
There are paradises more to explore
Why worry if you have lost one abode
There are a million addresses to claim
You are the falcon, your passion is flight
And you have skies more to transcend
Lose not yourself in the cycle of days and nights
Within your reach are feats even more
Gone is the day when I was lonesome in the crowd
Today those who resonate my thoughts are more

Mohammed Iqbal 
Naujawaan ke Naam, Bal-e-Jibraeel, 1908