28.9.05
For my people
What, but what - and speak honestly, friend - can ever compare to the needle hitting the vein, the blood billowing in the barrel like a blossoming rose, pushing in the plunger, the warm chemical mixture pouring into warm rich pumping bloodstream?
After that, what else is there, once you've touched god and he comes in a ten-bag?
Some of you will never understand fully the question. Some of you never get to laugh at the ultimate gallows absurdity of it: is it the only way out, relinquishing your soul to a Higher Power, like the 12-steppers or Christians do it? Or to die a sad stinking travesty of humanity, lost all control?
There is a thing that equals and defeats all highs, and that is Doing Thy Will. When you are right, when you are in space and time exactly where you are meant to be and everything you do is right and you are reaping the reward for your courage; when you are unstoppable and your energy inevitable, when you connect with the universe and Do Thy Will, when you fulfill thy dharma.
That is the one thing we must seek for, brother, otherwise we may as well end it here and now.
(Thank you for reminding me, my friend. Sometime, the right word at the right time can save the universe. Although maybe just not now.)
Lessons of today
1. When in Rome, do as the Romanians (Paula Daunt)
2. Never combine valium and alcohol and then talk to anyone, at all
3. Life is really quite simple when you know what you want.
Rain returns to London. I dig out the long dark coat and unavoidably dark thoughts enter my mind. I am meant to be somewhere warm and sunny.
There was one thing we forgot to ask the Nestle people. If you combine Nescafe with cold milk and pour it on a slug, the slug dies instantly. This sounds brutal. I forgot to ask them whether there would be any way to revive such a slug. I would have told them it was my pet slug, but I was too drink-sodden for deadpan.
2. Never combine valium and alcohol and then talk to anyone, at all
3. Life is really quite simple when you know what you want.
Rain returns to London. I dig out the long dark coat and unavoidably dark thoughts enter my mind. I am meant to be somewhere warm and sunny.
There was one thing we forgot to ask the Nestle people. If you combine Nescafe with cold milk and pour it on a slug, the slug dies instantly. This sounds brutal. I forgot to ask them whether there would be any way to revive such a slug. I would have told them it was my pet slug, but I was too drink-sodden for deadpan.
An experiment in drunkeness, and a question about Nescafe resolved
A close friend (who you will know as Doc O) arrived back from New York yesterday so I went over last night to hear the stories of the Englishman in New York and drink most of a bottle of Smirnoff (is it Blue or Black, the 50% one?)
As you my faithful readers all know, my drug of choice is completely different, and I haven't been drunk for as long as I remember. Instead I have found a very good doctor who is curing me of my heroin addiction by the use of morphine sulphate and diazepam. I will explain the idea behind this later.
Now, in summer time, you can make a lovely iced coffee shake sort of thing by putting instant coffee, sugar and crushed ice in a milk bottle and shaking until it goes frothy and sludgy. Late in the evening, when the tonic and lemons had run out, I thought rather than drink raw alcohol in the manly Nordic manner, I would make alcoholic iced coffee.
Before continuing with the story, I must explain a little about Dr Otter. He lives in a dank repulsive hole of a flat (yeah, so hit me mthrfckr) which he rarely cleans and the kitchen of which lacks the most basic implements or civilised amenities. Yet, the man can put together a delicious sharkfish steak with sauce, with rice and a vegetable dish on the side. When he drinks, there will always be lemon, lime and ice-cubes at hand.
The alcoholic coffee sludge that I had produced deeply insulted Dr Otter and sparked a vicious and dangerous situation which could have ended badly. He held out with religious conviction that Nescafe must first be mixed with some boiling water. If one is making iced coffee, one then adds the cold milk or ice afterwards. I took the position that it is perfectly alright to mix the coffee directly with cold milk.
The argument escalated dangerously. Dr Otter and I are neither what one would term well-balanced people. Horrible violence, probably to my detriment, loomed. A solution had to be found.
Aha! I had it! On the side of the Nescafe jar, there is a Consumer Helpline Freephone number. We must call them and ask which one of us was right.
Doc O wouldn't give me the phone at first, knowing he would be proved wrong. Finally I managed to wrest it from him and telephone the number. A recorded message told me that, since it was 2 am, the line was closed, but in emergencies, the security at the Nestle office could be contacted on 019xxxxx whatever.
I telephoned the security and did my best to maintain my face in my shameful (yes, this combination of drugs is shameful) state of vodka and valium-sodden soddenness. He was very concerned and told me that, while he was just security, someone from the Consumer Help department could phone me back if I had a concern, so I gave him the number.
Several minutes later, someone from Nestle called. Doc O answered the phone and spoke most of the time. This made it possible for him to use his typical cheap sophistry to word the question in such a manner that he would be proved right. Apparently, the person he spoke to told him that Nescafe is, indeed, designed to be mixed with boiling water.
I took the phone before Doc O hung up and spoke to the Nestle Consumer Help Representative. He told me it was perfectly fine to mix Nescafe with cold milk and that, really, it came down to a matter of personal preference.
I expressed my admiration that Nestle had Consumer Help Representatives awake at all hours of night to answer important questions about their products, thanked the gentleman, and hung up. The man had, after all, spent some 20 minutes in the dead of night talking to two people who must have sounded like complete drooling idiots. He spoke calmly and soothingly and his concern for the consumers of his company's products was palpable.
Inevitably Doc O then began to crow "Ha, see! I was right and you were wrong!"
I was too far gone to care any more. I'm tired of arguing with people like him who can never concede defeat like a gentleman. I'm exactly the same, it must be said.
"History is written my the victor."
No, history is written by the one who has the blog. This has now become the established, recorded truth of what transpired that night. The following instant recipe for ice coffee was also validated by a Nestle representative. It is very nice on a hot summer day.
(As for Doc O, I have tried to help introduce him to the world of internet and computers because I think he should start a blog and suffered untold verbal abuse because of it. I finally managed to impress him with the new technology he so scorns when I found out how to extract morphine sulphate for injection from Zomorph slow-release morph capsules on Google.
If this were the sort of blog that commented on current events, I would heap scorn and contempt on the way the media have treated Kate Moss and her "cocaine shame", and pointed you all to this very readable Guardian article.)
(Note that important features of the story which I missed have been added to the comments section.)
As you my faithful readers all know, my drug of choice is completely different, and I haven't been drunk for as long as I remember. Instead I have found a very good doctor who is curing me of my heroin addiction by the use of morphine sulphate and diazepam. I will explain the idea behind this later.
Now, in summer time, you can make a lovely iced coffee shake sort of thing by putting instant coffee, sugar and crushed ice in a milk bottle and shaking until it goes frothy and sludgy. Late in the evening, when the tonic and lemons had run out, I thought rather than drink raw alcohol in the manly Nordic manner, I would make alcoholic iced coffee.
Before continuing with the story, I must explain a little about Dr Otter. He lives in a dank repulsive hole of a flat (yeah, so hit me mthrfckr) which he rarely cleans and the kitchen of which lacks the most basic implements or civilised amenities. Yet, the man can put together a delicious sharkfish steak with sauce, with rice and a vegetable dish on the side. When he drinks, there will always be lemon, lime and ice-cubes at hand.
The alcoholic coffee sludge that I had produced deeply insulted Dr Otter and sparked a vicious and dangerous situation which could have ended badly. He held out with religious conviction that Nescafe must first be mixed with some boiling water. If one is making iced coffee, one then adds the cold milk or ice afterwards. I took the position that it is perfectly alright to mix the coffee directly with cold milk.
The argument escalated dangerously. Dr Otter and I are neither what one would term well-balanced people. Horrible violence, probably to my detriment, loomed. A solution had to be found.
Aha! I had it! On the side of the Nescafe jar, there is a Consumer Helpline Freephone number. We must call them and ask which one of us was right.
Doc O wouldn't give me the phone at first, knowing he would be proved wrong. Finally I managed to wrest it from him and telephone the number. A recorded message told me that, since it was 2 am, the line was closed, but in emergencies, the security at the Nestle office could be contacted on 019xxxxx whatever.
I telephoned the security and did my best to maintain my face in my shameful (yes, this combination of drugs is shameful) state of vodka and valium-sodden soddenness. He was very concerned and told me that, while he was just security, someone from the Consumer Help department could phone me back if I had a concern, so I gave him the number.
Several minutes later, someone from Nestle called. Doc O answered the phone and spoke most of the time. This made it possible for him to use his typical cheap sophistry to word the question in such a manner that he would be proved right. Apparently, the person he spoke to told him that Nescafe is, indeed, designed to be mixed with boiling water.
I took the phone before Doc O hung up and spoke to the Nestle Consumer Help Representative. He told me it was perfectly fine to mix Nescafe with cold milk and that, really, it came down to a matter of personal preference.
I expressed my admiration that Nestle had Consumer Help Representatives awake at all hours of night to answer important questions about their products, thanked the gentleman, and hung up. The man had, after all, spent some 20 minutes in the dead of night talking to two people who must have sounded like complete drooling idiots. He spoke calmly and soothingly and his concern for the consumers of his company's products was palpable.
Inevitably Doc O then began to crow "Ha, see! I was right and you were wrong!"
I was too far gone to care any more. I'm tired of arguing with people like him who can never concede defeat like a gentleman. I'm exactly the same, it must be said.
"History is written my the victor."
No, history is written by the one who has the blog. This has now become the established, recorded truth of what transpired that night. The following instant recipe for ice coffee was also validated by a Nestle representative. It is very nice on a hot summer day.
1. Drink or empty about a quarter of a plastic milk 1 litre packet (use blue, ie full fat milk. of course)As a mixer for vodka, it is not to my taste. Large vodka tonic if you want to buy me a drink.
2. Add Nescafe, sugar and crushed ice to the rest of the remaining milk.
3. Screw milk packet top on securely and shake until frothy and sludgy.
4. Pour into glass and enjoy.
(As for Doc O, I have tried to help introduce him to the world of internet and computers because I think he should start a blog and suffered untold verbal abuse because of it. I finally managed to impress him with the new technology he so scorns when I found out how to extract morphine sulphate for injection from Zomorph slow-release morph capsules on Google.
If this were the sort of blog that commented on current events, I would heap scorn and contempt on the way the media have treated Kate Moss and her "cocaine shame", and pointed you all to this very readable Guardian article.)
(Note that important features of the story which I missed have been added to the comments section.)
27.9.05
Computer stuff
I would love to be here with you but I must occupy my time with other things for the time being. [redacted]
"Duuh I don't understand explain to me"
The computer will explain to you, it's easy. There's a whole new world of information out there.
The computers are taking over. Learn to communicate with them now. New Labour and the banking system will collapse, but don't worry, your funds are safe with us. And always and always new things to learn.
"Duuh I don't understand explain to me"
The computer will explain to you, it's easy. There's a whole new world of information out there.
The computers are taking over. Learn to communicate with them now. New Labour and the banking system will collapse, but don't worry, your funds are safe with us. And always and always new things to learn.
25.9.05
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves: "Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?"
Actually, who are you not to be?
You playing small doesn't serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people will not feel insecure around you.
As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
(incorrectly attributed as being from Nelson Mandela's inaugural speech, 1994...)
17.9.05
A story with no events part 2
Part one here
Edward Shah was the youngest son of a doctor, who had been the richest man in the district. As the youngest son, Edward had inherited none of the wide property (the rape-seed and sunflower fields, the mango groves, the sterling silver Raj-era pocket watch) amassed by the patriarch. In fact, he had inherited only a vast collection of cheap plastic wall clocks emblazoned with the emblems of forgotten pharmaceutical companies and medicines. The clocks covered the inside walls of his high-ceilinged mud-brick dwelling, an expanse of clocks stretching in every direction, none of them telling the right time.
Outside, the parched breeze still whispered over the plain, and second by second, the old men got even older.
Nothing happened yet.
Edward Shah was the youngest son of a doctor, who had been the richest man in the district. As the youngest son, Edward had inherited none of the wide property (the rape-seed and sunflower fields, the mango groves, the sterling silver Raj-era pocket watch) amassed by the patriarch. In fact, he had inherited only a vast collection of cheap plastic wall clocks emblazoned with the emblems of forgotten pharmaceutical companies and medicines. The clocks covered the inside walls of his high-ceilinged mud-brick dwelling, an expanse of clocks stretching in every direction, none of them telling the right time.
Outside, the parched breeze still whispered over the plain, and second by second, the old men got even older.
Nothing happened yet.
29.8.05
Nothing is happening here. The lights are off, the fish are hiding.
Allow me to point you to a fragment of sheer beauty, where one prays for reasons to hate the city.
No? Still here? Appalled at the off-hand ease with which one casts us these pretty words - for free - for any to sniff at or trample on? Then keep company with me, one who has lost his mastery of words.
What is the evidence? Exhibit one: a month or more I have struggled to tap out a simple article for a paper and ink publication. The brief: write about "squatting", your choice of angle and tone. That's a real London thing. No. No no no. Look here instead. The scatology repulses me, squeamish as I am; the absurdity of the whole thread delights me. Clever cross-referees find hidden references shared with realgem. They can be the "easily alarmed ones", or they can be the Wooden Bead Cartel. Whatever.
A blog is like nothing so much as an aquarium. Out in the inky blackness behind the screen, I watch colourful and alien creatures swim in the depths of the glass box.
Allow me to point you to a fragment of sheer beauty, where one prays for reasons to hate the city.
No? Still here? Appalled at the off-hand ease with which one casts us these pretty words - for free - for any to sniff at or trample on? Then keep company with me, one who has lost his mastery of words.
What is the evidence? Exhibit one: a month or more I have struggled to tap out a simple article for a paper and ink publication. The brief: write about "squatting", your choice of angle and tone. That's a real London thing. No. No no no. Look here instead. The scatology repulses me, squeamish as I am; the absurdity of the whole thread delights me. Clever cross-referees find hidden references shared with realgem. They can be the "easily alarmed ones", or they can be the Wooden Bead Cartel. Whatever.
A blog is like nothing so much as an aquarium. Out in the inky blackness behind the screen, I watch colourful and alien creatures swim in the depths of the glass box.
23.8.05
Once upon a time was VFEC
VFEC was my personal project to explore evolution towards Nietschzean übermensch-hood. A side-effect of the programme are the detailed diaries I kept over the last five years, until very recently. I glance through and can usually identify what I was doing on any given date. It is like an Aleister Crowley style magickal diary.
It is almost eerie. These books, better or for worse, seem to have been written by another person entirely. It is like holding a body of work by a dead man.
So I used to do things like see how long I could keep functioning without sleep (and without cheating by taking wakey-uppy drugs). The answer is: about a week, comfortably, with only one- or two-hour naps. Can you see me doing that now? Or, how long I could stay on the edge of orgasm without actually coming (I never got any of that Tantric effects when I was consciously trying for them). Or, how long I could stare at the moon without my mind starting to produce hallucinations to make me look away (it’s true, it happens).
VFEC embodied certain principles that predate VFEC. The very first notebook I started keeping (it was torn apart by an incensed ex-girlfriend years ago) listed some (somewhat facetious) Rules of Engagement, created under a thrumming tropic sun, viz:
1. be aggressively friendly
2. be un-apologetically non-sensical
3. open fire on unarmed enemies: it’s their fault they’re unarmed
4. do not wear a shirt tied around your face, lest the non-believers strangle you with it: for is not the Lord good?
Later, these developed into several central principles which guided the whole VFEC programme. Some examples from memory:
1. Find the fear, explore the fear, destroy it. (This is to say: it is what you fear most where lies the direction of advancement. Find out what you fear, what your weakness is, and force yourself to experience and explore that fear – that is how you will learn most about yourself.)
2. Vary your habits. Do something you’ve never done before every day. (Take every opportunity you are given to try something new.)
corollary to VFEC are the dream notebooks, an archive of many fantastic and banal dreams, some of them lucid or premonitory and all of them a delight to re-encounter and not have forgotten, spanning some 7 or 8 years in total and therefore predating VFEC.
VFEC, by the way, stood for Valid Fucking Experiment in Consciousness. It is the result of one man’s manic need to write everything down. It distills the wisdom of 6 major religions, 212 self-improvement manuals, 3 Maharishis, 111 self-help books, 13 CDs of NLP self-confidence boosting affirmations, one and a half Robert Anton Wilson books and 500 microgrammes of acid.
This last comment was a cheap and cheapening joke at the expense of a strange and singular work (ie. the VFEC journals), purely to anticipate snide jokes at the pedantic New Age tone of the thing. This is why you should never immerse yourself in self-deprecating self-justifications, because in the end, there is no way out; the serpent eats its own tail. Indeed, never apologise. The modern cyber-age Magus’s magical diary is, of course, his blog.
I never took the programme far enough before running back to the safety of heroin or some woman’s bed.
Nor do I have anything to obsessively document, and there are loads of things that scare me, loads of places to start… an explosive combination of circumstances…
It is almost eerie. These books, better or for worse, seem to have been written by another person entirely. It is like holding a body of work by a dead man.
So I used to do things like see how long I could keep functioning without sleep (and without cheating by taking wakey-uppy drugs). The answer is: about a week, comfortably, with only one- or two-hour naps. Can you see me doing that now? Or, how long I could stay on the edge of orgasm without actually coming (I never got any of that Tantric effects when I was consciously trying for them). Or, how long I could stare at the moon without my mind starting to produce hallucinations to make me look away (it’s true, it happens).
VFEC embodied certain principles that predate VFEC. The very first notebook I started keeping (it was torn apart by an incensed ex-girlfriend years ago) listed some (somewhat facetious) Rules of Engagement, created under a thrumming tropic sun, viz:
1. be aggressively friendly
2. be un-apologetically non-sensical
3. open fire on unarmed enemies: it’s their fault they’re unarmed
4. do not wear a shirt tied around your face, lest the non-believers strangle you with it: for is not the Lord good?
Later, these developed into several central principles which guided the whole VFEC programme. Some examples from memory:
1. Find the fear, explore the fear, destroy it. (This is to say: it is what you fear most where lies the direction of advancement. Find out what you fear, what your weakness is, and force yourself to experience and explore that fear – that is how you will learn most about yourself.)
2. Vary your habits. Do something you’ve never done before every day. (Take every opportunity you are given to try something new.)
corollary to VFEC are the dream notebooks, an archive of many fantastic and banal dreams, some of them lucid or premonitory and all of them a delight to re-encounter and not have forgotten, spanning some 7 or 8 years in total and therefore predating VFEC.
VFEC, by the way, stood for Valid Fucking Experiment in Consciousness. It is the result of one man’s manic need to write everything down. It distills the wisdom of 6 major religions, 212 self-improvement manuals, 3 Maharishis, 111 self-help books, 13 CDs of NLP self-confidence boosting affirmations, one and a half Robert Anton Wilson books and 500 microgrammes of acid.
This last comment was a cheap and cheapening joke at the expense of a strange and singular work (ie. the VFEC journals), purely to anticipate snide jokes at the pedantic New Age tone of the thing. This is why you should never immerse yourself in self-deprecating self-justifications, because in the end, there is no way out; the serpent eats its own tail. Indeed, never apologise. The modern cyber-age Magus’s magical diary is, of course, his blog.
I never took the programme far enough before running back to the safety of heroin or some woman’s bed.
Nor do I have anything to obsessively document, and there are loads of things that scare me, loads of places to start… an explosive combination of circumstances…
H * A * T * E
ABATE the hold of fate BY KILLING
KILL A MAN (the voices say – only way escape your fate)
Salvation is through anger, transcendence through hate
ACT NOW! Or forever hold your piece
The oil-smooth metallic beauty of the ACTION
Snicker-snack! And there is a round in the chamber!
Ugly face explodes in a shocking spray of gore.
Like I came in your head! Ha! And now I need some more
Already the stinking cowards run in mortal horror.
So easy would it be! How can you not do it? Seek them out and kill them all. Indulge your fantasies of revenge. Indulge your lust to be HIDEOUS arbitrary.
I stop posting for a mere three weeks and lose all my readers. Well, good riddance to you, if that’s how faithful you are. I don’t want readers. Realgem is changing.
Nevermind literary experimentation or underground journalism: I am here, now, with a new honesty. I am here, now, to indulge my self-pity, self-loathing and self-contempt to the hilt. That’s what sort of a blog this will be, now. See how long you can stand it.
I seethe with hatred for poor people. Why the fuck do they have to shop in the same shops as me? I walk all the way down to the bottom end of the high street so I can buy a bottle of olive oil for 99p, and I have to fight my way through clutches of frantic ugly poor people, glancing around with their fear-filled rodent faces and their lifeless poverty-dulled eyes, desperate to save some pathetic 20p on a packet of nappies. Why does their peripheral vision never seem to function? Inside, I am a tall, wizened, howling monster, like in the Aphex Twin video, bellowing at the trembling temorous moustached grannies who “Excuse me” and “Oh I’m sorry” and clutch their shopping baskets protectively to themselves like a baby.
And this is only one jagged corner of a vast and ponderous submarine hate. And then an alarming thought awakens. How many of the other faces who float past in the mist of rain (I am out in the street now and striding long angry strides) conceal twisted angry hatreds like mine? How many look upon me and see everything they ever loathed?
How can this city be viable?
London stings
Little things
Don’t apologise for things
This is what a day out in town does to me. Sitting on the top deck of a bus, inner clothes soaked with sweat, outer clothes dripping with rain, when the bus stops at a crowded bus stop to let on an endless stream of ugly wet people, I feel like nothing so much as unloading into all their faces with a heavy handgun. Go go go, driver, I left a window open at home… and it starts to become clear, why those bus drivers were so crazy.
Once upon a time, I lived next door to W___, a Welsh girl, and D__, her tall black dreadlocked boyfriend. They were both bus drivers.
The walls were thin. The rest of us who lived on that landing heard everything that went on in W__’s room. Viz, every second night, loud and violent sex. “Suck me, suck me bitch!” – “Glglglghhkhhhglupglup…” Every second night, violence sans sex. “Bitch! Whore!” Things smashing.
One time we are smoking in D2__’s room when W___ runs in, frantic and terrified. D__ is after her, grabs her, starts throwing her around the room as if we weren’t even there. And all in all, when it comes down to it, I can sympathise with D___. I never ever met such a dysfunctional evil bitch. She wantonly destroyed anything of beauty anyone placed in the corridors. She mercilessly provoked people into attacking her and then ran to you for sympathy and support. She went into paroxysms of self-loathing frenzy, smashing up everything around her, slashing at innocent bystanders with her nails, then breaking down sobbing in desperate misery. The mindless violence and abuse they faced as Hackney bus drivers possibly accounts for, but hardly excuses, this behaviour.
I arrive home and heave a sigh of relief that no opportunist burglars have taken advantage of the open window, then settle down to do what it is I do all day: stare at the wall and contemplate changing my life. Tomorrow. Fuck you. It’s my party and I can cry if I want to.
KILL A MAN (the voices say – only way escape your fate)
Salvation is through anger, transcendence through hate
ACT NOW! Or forever hold your piece
The oil-smooth metallic beauty of the ACTION
Snicker-snack! And there is a round in the chamber!
Ugly face explodes in a shocking spray of gore.
Like I came in your head! Ha! And now I need some more
Already the stinking cowards run in mortal horror.
So easy would it be! How can you not do it? Seek them out and kill them all. Indulge your fantasies of revenge. Indulge your lust to be HIDEOUS arbitrary.
I stop posting for a mere three weeks and lose all my readers. Well, good riddance to you, if that’s how faithful you are. I don’t want readers. Realgem is changing.
Nevermind literary experimentation or underground journalism: I am here, now, with a new honesty. I am here, now, to indulge my self-pity, self-loathing and self-contempt to the hilt. That’s what sort of a blog this will be, now. See how long you can stand it.
I seethe with hatred for poor people. Why the fuck do they have to shop in the same shops as me? I walk all the way down to the bottom end of the high street so I can buy a bottle of olive oil for 99p, and I have to fight my way through clutches of frantic ugly poor people, glancing around with their fear-filled rodent faces and their lifeless poverty-dulled eyes, desperate to save some pathetic 20p on a packet of nappies. Why does their peripheral vision never seem to function? Inside, I am a tall, wizened, howling monster, like in the Aphex Twin video, bellowing at the trembling temorous moustached grannies who “Excuse me” and “Oh I’m sorry” and clutch their shopping baskets protectively to themselves like a baby.
And this is only one jagged corner of a vast and ponderous submarine hate. And then an alarming thought awakens. How many of the other faces who float past in the mist of rain (I am out in the street now and striding long angry strides) conceal twisted angry hatreds like mine? How many look upon me and see everything they ever loathed?
How can this city be viable?
London stings
Little things
Don’t apologise for things
This is what a day out in town does to me. Sitting on the top deck of a bus, inner clothes soaked with sweat, outer clothes dripping with rain, when the bus stops at a crowded bus stop to let on an endless stream of ugly wet people, I feel like nothing so much as unloading into all their faces with a heavy handgun. Go go go, driver, I left a window open at home… and it starts to become clear, why those bus drivers were so crazy.
Once upon a time, I lived next door to W___, a Welsh girl, and D__, her tall black dreadlocked boyfriend. They were both bus drivers.
The walls were thin. The rest of us who lived on that landing heard everything that went on in W__’s room. Viz, every second night, loud and violent sex. “Suck me, suck me bitch!” – “Glglglghhkhhhglupglup…” Every second night, violence sans sex. “Bitch! Whore!” Things smashing.
One time we are smoking in D2__’s room when W___ runs in, frantic and terrified. D__ is after her, grabs her, starts throwing her around the room as if we weren’t even there. And all in all, when it comes down to it, I can sympathise with D___. I never ever met such a dysfunctional evil bitch. She wantonly destroyed anything of beauty anyone placed in the corridors. She mercilessly provoked people into attacking her and then ran to you for sympathy and support. She went into paroxysms of self-loathing frenzy, smashing up everything around her, slashing at innocent bystanders with her nails, then breaking down sobbing in desperate misery. The mindless violence and abuse they faced as Hackney bus drivers possibly accounts for, but hardly excuses, this behaviour.
I arrive home and heave a sigh of relief that no opportunist burglars have taken advantage of the open window, then settle down to do what it is I do all day: stare at the wall and contemplate changing my life. Tomorrow. Fuck you. It’s my party and I can cry if I want to.
22.8.05
I'm still here
I have not stopped blogging. Things are uneasy now. But check back within the week: realgem endures!
6.8.05
Demonology
Demons… You’ve got to go pretty deep to get demons. My closest encounters with demons have been at squat parties. It takes the extreme measures of dancing for a day and a night and obliterating the rational mind under a merciless chemical onslaught to get the vision.
We're in the yard of the squat party building, Adam is stumbling around in the sunshine, lost. The pikey kids are pushing him around, laughing at him. But a bit scared and apprehensive, too, they back off when he turns to look at them. The way he looks at people is just too weird.
"Are you trying to find your way out from somewhere?" I ask him. He nods. The pikey kids look at me strangely. "You're a bit fucked in the head, too, aren't you?" they ask me.
I used to see Adam around a lot at those parties. Every time he sees me he gives me a great big bear hug. Probably no one else ever thought he might be trapped in a world that is just as painfully real as this one. Shit, I don't know. I do know that it's not always wise to interact with psychotics on their own terms, to enter their mirrorworld. If you can let go of consensus reality at will enough to do that, you're in some risk of losing yourself in there.
I think he was really, really alone in there.
It's strange how Adam’s eyes have changed since the incident. The corneas have become a pale, pale, icy blue, almost dissolving into the surrounding white, with staring dilated black pupils. His gaze is never focused on anything that anyone else can see, although he reacts to things in his immediate vicinity as if his visual perception were unimpaired. He stumbles rather than walks, and he stumbles along regular twisting geometric paths, as if trapped and wandering in invisible corridors. He lifts his hands to his head every so often, as if warding off blows.
We're in the yard of the squat party building, Adam is stumbling around in the sunshine, lost. The pikey kids are pushing him around, laughing at him. But a bit scared and apprehensive, too, they back off when he turns to look at them. The way he looks at people is just too weird.
"Are you trying to find your way out from somewhere?" I ask him. He nods. The pikey kids look at me strangely. "You're a bit fucked in the head, too, aren't you?" they ask me.
I used to see Adam around a lot at those parties. Every time he sees me he gives me a great big bear hug. Probably no one else ever thought he might be trapped in a world that is just as painfully real as this one. Shit, I don't know. I do know that it's not always wise to interact with psychotics on their own terms, to enter their mirrorworld. If you can let go of consensus reality at will enough to do that, you're in some risk of losing yourself in there.
I think he was really, really alone in there.
A story with no events: part I
About an hour's drive from Nowshera, on Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province, you will find a cluster of villages, one called Japon. Nearby, there is also a Jermani and an Amrika.
In the village called Japan: Wazir Shah, Saheb Shah (audacious name, audacious moustache), and Edward Shah, elders, lounge around on charpais. Smoke rises into the shimmering air from an immense hookah. A Datsun pick-up drones up towards Malakand, away on the main road.
The road bisects a vast borderless dusty yellow plain, over which a parched breeze whispers. Here, conversation is unhurried and there is no need to have a punch-line to your stories.
There is an impressive bank of largely redundant light switches, traditional to Pakistani electricianship, on the wall of the house against the wall of which Saheb Shah leans his back. Japan gets a few hours of electricity each day. There are two electrical appliances in the house: one ceiling fan, and one lightbulb. The remaining switches play a role later on in the story.
What sort of a place is Japan? Noseless ghosts of dead Buddhist monks (butchered and mutilated by the armies of Mahmud of Ghazni) from the ruined monastery on the hill sometimes come down into the town, and are not liked by the superstitious population. Little boys with braziers come and shoo the ghosts away with acrid smoke for two rupees a go. Itinerant salesmen of dentifrice with loudhailers mounted on bicycles and sample cases of bright pink powders periodically pass through the town on their endless journeys. Legless men, scuttling through the traffic on powerful overdeveloped arms, gather to beg at the customs toll booth. They are heavily involved in the heroin trade, smuggling wads of drug-money under the noses of policemen. The police and army shoot it out sometimes, at the petrol pump on the corner of the road up to the red hill.
In the village called Japan: Wazir Shah, Saheb Shah (audacious name, audacious moustache), and Edward Shah, elders, lounge around on charpais. Smoke rises into the shimmering air from an immense hookah. A Datsun pick-up drones up towards Malakand, away on the main road.
The road bisects a vast borderless dusty yellow plain, over which a parched breeze whispers. Here, conversation is unhurried and there is no need to have a punch-line to your stories.
There is an impressive bank of largely redundant light switches, traditional to Pakistani electricianship, on the wall of the house against the wall of which Saheb Shah leans his back. Japan gets a few hours of electricity each day. There are two electrical appliances in the house: one ceiling fan, and one lightbulb. The remaining switches play a role later on in the story.
What sort of a place is Japan? Noseless ghosts of dead Buddhist monks (butchered and mutilated by the armies of Mahmud of Ghazni) from the ruined monastery on the hill sometimes come down into the town, and are not liked by the superstitious population. Little boys with braziers come and shoo the ghosts away with acrid smoke for two rupees a go. Itinerant salesmen of dentifrice with loudhailers mounted on bicycles and sample cases of bright pink powders periodically pass through the town on their endless journeys. Legless men, scuttling through the traffic on powerful overdeveloped arms, gather to beg at the customs toll booth. They are heavily involved in the heroin trade, smuggling wads of drug-money under the noses of policemen. The police and army shoot it out sometimes, at the petrol pump on the corner of the road up to the red hill.
(nothing has happened yet; to be continued...)
4.8.05
Based on a true story
This is what Labour’s £X billion for education and training is being spent on… motivation classes for the unemployed. The tutor holds up a sorry-looking rubber chicken; it is passed around the class.
“What is wrong with this rubber chicken?”
Correct answer: “It’s unemployed!”
“What is wrong with this rubber chicken?”
Correct answer: “It’s unemployed!”
Archive material: juvenalia
Forgive me my Lord, my Lord the Creator,
I worship, praise on my lips.
But before the Creator I place the created,
I worship the curve of her hips.
One day
One day the engine will howl with power. Until that day I tinker, polish, test, adjust, hone, discover new tricks of the engineer’s art, search for untapped sources of energy. One day the howling of the engine will be fearsome, its power monstrous, its momentum unstoppable, its inevitability awesome.
The Edinburgh Fringe
Even as we sit comfortably enjoying the sultry London evening, 600 miles north the Edinburgh Fringe Theatre Festival will be opening. Artistes whose poverty is absolute and abject will be involved in a bizarre and deadly race to wallpaper the designated pillars along the Royal Mile with posters for their shows.
The layers of paper grow thicker as the pressure grows… How did we find ourselves in this surreal echoing nightmare? Sweat runs into reddened sleep-deprived eyes and little bits of brown packing tape coat everything... Can’t afford to drop behind… must keep papering… The sedimentary layers of promotional material grow thicker at the rate of about an inch every 45 minutes... How many shows have been swallowed whole by the strict rule: posters for shows only in designated places?
The layers of paper grow thicker as the pressure grows… How did we find ourselves in this surreal echoing nightmare? Sweat runs into reddened sleep-deprived eyes and little bits of brown packing tape coat everything... Can’t afford to drop behind… must keep papering… The sedimentary layers of promotional material grow thicker at the rate of about an inch every 45 minutes... How many shows have been swallowed whole by the strict rule: posters for shows only in designated places?