[redacted]
I wish I could find words of such power that into two or three I could distill the essence, the flavour of the insanity... spreading out a sheet on the pavement near the market to flog all my redundant possessions, watching the Sunday strollers and the church-goers stop to flip through books or browse through bric-a-brac... living on the run out of a shoulder-bag with a laptop and a single change of clothes... begging 30p to get money for a Dunn's River Nurishment drink (vanilla, of course), ah that went down nicely, first protein and sugar molecules of the day, have another cigarette and then get on the phone to negotiate a grand and a half out of a newspaper editor for a story... checking into detox and then doing a runner, cold and clammy and then hot and shivering like an epileptic in the backseat of a cab racing north through London winterdark, swigging cognac that does nothing to take the edge off, and oh my God this city is beautiful at night, and some evil drum and bass is pumping from the radio and the devil has the best tunes and we're laughing together as we reach Holloway Road, only five minutes away from salvation of my eternal soul...
[redacted]
Time flickers back into existence, and the terrifying question of what to do with it all... get my kicks wandering store aisles and valuable things drop into my pockets by magic... It's ninja training,[redacted]
Perhaps because I spat on providence I found myself, not long afterwards, in a police holding cell, under arrest for something I didn't do, noticing they hadn't taken my belt from me and looking for somewhere to loop the end over... It was a bitter dark cold winter, trapped in London by bail and addiction... But the winters always are like that, damn this cold and Protestant north.
But the fearful, the absurd question of time... what should I be doing now?
Just breathe... That might be a good place to start... keep breathing, it's very important you keep breathing...
I am staying for a time with the Nietzschean psychedelic-fascist bitch wife (that's a term of endearment, here) one of the original characters on realgem and whose fault everything is and the malung bones is not far either... it feels much better here in South London, away from streets whose familiarity sickens me, like I have trodden them so many times I have worn holes in surface reality and don't want to see the nauseous squalid truth underneath...[redacted]
We shout and swear at each other... 'What is the chocolate spread doing there?' - 'What, it's not fucking doing anything... look at it, it's a fucking jar of chocolate spread... it's being taught to like being wherever it's put, right by that spoon, it has no fucking choice in the matter...' - 'No, I mean... fuckin hell, Mike... you're a weirdo.' - 'I'm making some fucking chocolate toast. Fuck, what?' [redacted]
I wish I could find words of such power that into two or three I could distill the essence, the flavour of the insanity... spreading out a sheet on the pavement near the market to flog all my redundant possessions, watching the Sunday strollers and the church-goers stop to flip through books or browse through bric-a-brac... living on the run out of a shoulder-bag with a laptop and a single change of clothes... begging 30p to get money for a Dunn's River Nurishment drink (vanilla, of course), ah that went down nicely, first protein and sugar molecules of the day, have another cigarette and then get on the phone to negotiate a grand and a half out of a newspaper editor for a story... checking into detox and then doing a runner, cold and clammy and then hot and shivering like an epileptic in the backseat of a cab racing north through London winterdark, swigging cognac that does nothing to take the edge off, and oh my God this city is beautiful at night, and some evil drum and bass is pumping from the radio and the devil has the best tunes and we're laughing together as we reach Holloway Road, only five minutes away from salvation of my eternal soul...
[redacted]
Time flickers back into existence, and the terrifying question of what to do with it all... get my kicks wandering store aisles and valuable things drop into my pockets by magic... It's ninja training,[redacted]
Perhaps because I spat on providence I found myself, not long afterwards, in a police holding cell, under arrest for something I didn't do, noticing they hadn't taken my belt from me and looking for somewhere to loop the end over... It was a bitter dark cold winter, trapped in London by bail and addiction... But the winters always are like that, damn this cold and Protestant north.
But the fearful, the absurd question of time... what should I be doing now?
Just breathe... That might be a good place to start... keep breathing, it's very important you keep breathing...
I am staying for a time with the Nietzschean psychedelic-fascist bitch wife (that's a term of endearment, here) one of the original characters on realgem and whose fault everything is and the malung bones is not far either... it feels much better here in South London, away from streets whose familiarity sickens me, like I have trodden them so many times I have worn holes in surface reality and don't want to see the nauseous squalid truth underneath...[redacted]
We shout and swear at each other... 'What is the chocolate spread doing there?' - 'What, it's not fucking doing anything... look at it, it's a fucking jar of chocolate spread... it's being taught to like being wherever it's put, right by that spoon, it has no fucking choice in the matter...' - 'No, I mean... fuckin hell, Mike... you're a weirdo.' - 'I'm making some fucking chocolate toast. Fuck, what?' [redacted]
