It has something to do with heroin sickness, or the unholy angles which should not be that you read about in Lovecraft stories.
28.2.05
Unnatural geometry
It has something to do with heroin sickness, or the unholy angles which should not be that you read about in Lovecraft stories.
26.2.05
25.2.05
Agents: disciple of energy and CIA heroin narcoterrorism, or, Two reasons to quit heroin
I walk at night to the Tesco Express, icy wind sweeping deserted C____ Rd. Lumbering black guy approaches across the street. Camouflage coat gleaming with dirt like a street-sleeper's, almost-healed cut, fresh scar on right side of face. Here it comes (I don’t know what? A knife, an elbow in the face; “Give me a cigarette..." and then, "Give me your wallet, give me your phone.”) But what the fuck? This is London, a civilised town. Shit like this doesn’t happen, not to me, not on my home manor where all the street people know who I am. But more, I am secure and safe in myself. I fear no violence and no man. But more, SHIT LIKE THIS DOESN’T HAPPEN IN MY HEAD. I DON’T THINK LIKE THIS, LIKE THE EASILY-ALARMED ONES.
Opens his cupped hand to reveal, not a blade, but the end of a spliff. "You got a light, bruv?" I pass disposable lighter (warily, though) and we fall into step heading down towards the Tesco petrol station.
"You look like you're drunk, you walking like you was drinking. Or you just been working late or whatever, you tired? Cause of the way you is walking, that's just why I was saying." I'm stoned on heroin and hashish and not walking straight.
"I've been working," I say. Been in front of this computer all day. "Seen, seen," he say. So we walk and talk. "How about you, you drunk?" I ask him. Yeah, he been having a few drinks, he smile almost sheepishly. He is saying about how it would be good to get some sort of certification, work in security, something like this. "What is it... like, what is it you do?"
“I work in the newspapers.” Which is sometimes the case. "Seen, seen," he say. He have a sort of simple, forthright, friendly manner. Really innocent. "It's good, it's interesting work. You don't get paid as much as you might imagine but it's interesting work."
“Seen. Are you the story finder-outer or whatever it is? How’d you find stories?" he asks.
And then he says: "But you know about how your will is in energy centres in your body? You need to let some energy shine out of your heart and it leads you to where you need to go, innit? It gives you like the instinct for what you need to do.”
I do a sort of mental double-take.
“I mean I use it for different things, I use it to find parties and like that. But where did you learn about like this energy stuff and that?" he asks.
There is still adrenalin racing. I still having trouble remaining calm. I disconcerted and really suspicious, still, that something is not right. I am trying to reach my deep mind, which always knows about people, always has the right score on them. We turn into the Tesco petrol station, pass a car parked outside with three hard-looking black kids, go inside, start picking out shopping.
Run in to each other again in the aisle. He start to talk about some yoga he does, more about energy... One of the black kids from outside walks in, the guy I talking to turns to greet him, I walk off with no ceremony. "I was just talking to this gentleman here," I hear him saying. "Oh, where he gone?"
I pay and leave, and I am still, admit this, heart racing and expecting... I don't know what? Them four to follow me in the car and jump out and rob me? My mind is seething with paranoia. Paranoia which have out-weighed my curiosity about these unusual things he saying.
WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING TO MY MIND? What turned me into one of the easily-alarmed ones? Mentally I am still scanning for a scam or a piss-take. I am screaming inside: what the fuck happened to the happy maniac of just five weeks ago? Heroin destroyed him. Back to the walking dead. I didn't even ask him for his name.
I get home, downstairs is deserted, and heroin and the CIA are on the radio, that word stabbing into my ears from the radio. I put an instant supermarket pizza in the oven and sit alone at the table and listen. 'CIA covert operations and the narcotics trade', produced by Alternative Radio in Boulder, Colorado, on Resonance 104.4 FM.
The first website I ever made, must have been 1998 or thereabouts, had a photo of some Afghans with RPGs and the legend: Support the Taliban, buy Afghani heroin! The server made me take it down after a few days.
It may be our right to dose ourself with what we want, it's perfectly reasonable to argue. But consider, then: How many people died to get this bag here? How many wars has this drug money financed?
Even as a wave of cheap heroin hit the US in the early 80s, the CIA was facilitating setting up heroin labs to finance the warlord armies fighting the Soviets, they are saying on the radio. Meanwhile, the number of known heroin addicts in Pakistan rose from 5000 or so in 1979 to 1.2 million in '85.
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the real motherfucker, the belligerent and ruthless butcher of Kabul, was receiving 50% of US arms during the Soviet years in Afghanistan. He ran a vast network of heroin labs. The CIA helping the big heroin players evade the international DEA, all agents of the same government. And like this.
It's compelling listening.
I'm nodding off over the table...
Opens his cupped hand to reveal, not a blade, but the end of a spliff. "You got a light, bruv?" I pass disposable lighter (warily, though) and we fall into step heading down towards the Tesco petrol station.
"You look like you're drunk, you walking like you was drinking. Or you just been working late or whatever, you tired? Cause of the way you is walking, that's just why I was saying." I'm stoned on heroin and hashish and not walking straight.
"I've been working," I say. Been in front of this computer all day. "Seen, seen," he say. So we walk and talk. "How about you, you drunk?" I ask him. Yeah, he been having a few drinks, he smile almost sheepishly. He is saying about how it would be good to get some sort of certification, work in security, something like this. "What is it... like, what is it you do?"
“I work in the newspapers.” Which is sometimes the case. "Seen, seen," he say. He have a sort of simple, forthright, friendly manner. Really innocent. "It's good, it's interesting work. You don't get paid as much as you might imagine but it's interesting work."
“Seen. Are you the story finder-outer or whatever it is? How’d you find stories?" he asks.
And then he says: "But you know about how your will is in energy centres in your body? You need to let some energy shine out of your heart and it leads you to where you need to go, innit? It gives you like the instinct for what you need to do.”
I do a sort of mental double-take.
“I mean I use it for different things, I use it to find parties and like that. But where did you learn about like this energy stuff and that?" he asks.
There is still adrenalin racing. I still having trouble remaining calm. I disconcerted and really suspicious, still, that something is not right. I am trying to reach my deep mind, which always knows about people, always has the right score on them. We turn into the Tesco petrol station, pass a car parked outside with three hard-looking black kids, go inside, start picking out shopping.
Run in to each other again in the aisle. He start to talk about some yoga he does, more about energy... One of the black kids from outside walks in, the guy I talking to turns to greet him, I walk off with no ceremony. "I was just talking to this gentleman here," I hear him saying. "Oh, where he gone?"
I pay and leave, and I am still, admit this, heart racing and expecting... I don't know what? Them four to follow me in the car and jump out and rob me? My mind is seething with paranoia. Paranoia which have out-weighed my curiosity about these unusual things he saying.
WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING TO MY MIND? What turned me into one of the easily-alarmed ones? Mentally I am still scanning for a scam or a piss-take. I am screaming inside: what the fuck happened to the happy maniac of just five weeks ago? Heroin destroyed him. Back to the walking dead. I didn't even ask him for his name.
I get home, downstairs is deserted, and heroin and the CIA are on the radio, that word stabbing into my ears from the radio. I put an instant supermarket pizza in the oven and sit alone at the table and listen. 'CIA covert operations and the narcotics trade', produced by Alternative Radio in Boulder, Colorado, on Resonance 104.4 FM.
The first website I ever made, must have been 1998 or thereabouts, had a photo of some Afghans with RPGs and the legend: Support the Taliban, buy Afghani heroin! The server made me take it down after a few days.
It may be our right to dose ourself with what we want, it's perfectly reasonable to argue. But consider, then: How many people died to get this bag here? How many wars has this drug money financed?
Even as a wave of cheap heroin hit the US in the early 80s, the CIA was facilitating setting up heroin labs to finance the warlord armies fighting the Soviets, they are saying on the radio. Meanwhile, the number of known heroin addicts in Pakistan rose from 5000 or so in 1979 to 1.2 million in '85.
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the real motherfucker, the belligerent and ruthless butcher of Kabul, was receiving 50% of US arms during the Soviet years in Afghanistan. He ran a vast network of heroin labs. The CIA helping the big heroin players evade the international DEA, all agents of the same government. And like this.
It's compelling listening.
I'm nodding off over the table...
big bubbling vats of heroin mixture against a backdrop of shimmering pink and yellow mountains under a deep deep turqoise sky. What shall we mix with this heroin, Jahan Akhbar Khan? Glucose powder? No, look, we can put ground-up carcasses of AIDS-infected donkeys. Why settle for less?... because wakefulness is harried and uncomfortable and I'm feeling some measure of self-loathing for my fear. But the world is giving me clues again.
23.2.05
22.2.05
The ghastly art and death of Zdzislaw Beksinski
Beksinski was found stabbed to death in his Warsaw apartment late on Monday night. GOD REST HIS SOUL; I don't know what else to say. We have been robbed of the power and meaning of these traditional phrases (not to mention the power of the sometimes-important words "thank-you" and "sorry", but these through gross over-use by the English).
Ahhhh, forgive me, already I'm drawn into an irrelevant and irreverent digression. There is a small selection of his work here - you'll find more elsewhere on the internet - go and contemplate...
21.2.05
In other news
This is quite funny; after an honourable 500 years of "rum, sodomy and the lash", the Royal Navy is now proudly announcing a campaign to recruit homosexual sailors.
These days on blogger you can time-stamp entries to look as though they were written whenever... I have about eight draft entries that I think are all worthwhile and entertaining stories from earlier this month... But I really have to catch up on work... I'm gonna tell you a little bit about my job, as well, but later. I'm on the clock right now, what do lawyers call it? I'm billing... but I should get on the phone and start doing my job.
But a thought for you: perfectionism is the death of any blog. I spend too long on some of these entries... Just publish, and be damned... Innit?
I bought a new cute little digital camera (with negligible shutter lag, which always have been my biggest complaint about low- and mid-range digitals) but I can't install the software to transfer photos from it because my CD drive is, technically speaking, completely fucked up. Totalmente fudido. Hajalla. Tut gia. So from Saturday I begin to publish you some new photos again. Photography is my other new addiction, and (still at this stage, at least) altogether more healthy. I got some old photography I really pleased with but want to bring you something fresh, something new, maybe something sexy... Til later, then...
These days on blogger you can time-stamp entries to look as though they were written whenever... I have about eight draft entries that I think are all worthwhile and entertaining stories from earlier this month... But I really have to catch up on work... I'm gonna tell you a little bit about my job, as well, but later. I'm on the clock right now, what do lawyers call it? I'm billing... but I should get on the phone and start doing my job.
But a thought for you: perfectionism is the death of any blog. I spend too long on some of these entries... Just publish, and be damned... Innit?
I bought a new cute little digital camera (with negligible shutter lag, which always have been my biggest complaint about low- and mid-range digitals) but I can't install the software to transfer photos from it because my CD drive is, technically speaking, completely fucked up. Totalmente fudido. Hajalla. Tut gia. So from Saturday I begin to publish you some new photos again. Photography is my other new addiction, and (still at this stage, at least) altogether more healthy. I got some old photography I really pleased with but want to bring you something fresh, something new, maybe something sexy... Til later, then...
Shameless Eyes
shameless eyes
you've got the saddest pair of shameless eyes
and how i hate to see them dry
and how i like to see them cry
oh i fantasize
of putting shame back in those shameless eyes
i'm longing for a long goodbye
where we can watch the feeling die
(gonzales)
Hunter S. Thompson - R. I. P.
20.2.05
My new lady
It is 365 days since I got married. Feb 20, and I wake up in moderately bad heroin withdrawal...
[[blahblahblahblahblahetc - temporarily redacted]]
(This, in itself, is not an original thought... it was one of the favourite themes of my sister E___'s smelly homeless friend in Bristol, for example... Poets have always recognised that opium is feminine.)
Enough, Jesus Christ, enough. Maybe the whole universe does revolve around my love life? More entertaining stories coming soon.
10.2.05
Parker-Bowles-Windsor-Saxe-Coburg-Gotha
These stinking inbred gastropods are trying to upstage my fucking birthday.
9.2.05
My darling Yamaha
I found the bike safe, against expectations, still hiding in the alleyway in Whitechapel where I left it. The wing mirrors were twisted inwards like the arms of a schoolkid doing an uurrrgggh spazz imitation. I found it by getting as close to the dangerously twisted state I was in when I crashed it and retracing my route...
More observations about last night in a moment... I have some work shit to take care of...
More observations about last night in a moment... I have some work shit to take care of...
8.2.05
Everything new was once something that died
May Patricia H___, to whom I owe one-half of my Anglo-Saxon genes, R. I. P.
Occasional political content
But I have to do it sometimes. Johann Hari, the Independent's excellent baby-faced columnist, writes on 2 Feb 2005:
Who owns Britain? Most of us would instinctively reply: we do. The British people own the British Isles. This is a democracy, isn't it? But the facts tell a different story. When you look at a map of the British Isles, you are looking not at your home but at a land mass overwhelmingly owned by a tiny aristocratic elite. Extraordinary though it might seem, in the 21st century, 0.6 per cent of the British people own 69 per cent of the land on which we live - and they are mostly the same families who owned it in the 19th century.Full text here.
When it comes to land ownership, Britain today is a more unequal country than Brazil - where there are regular land riots. We are beaten in the European league tables only by Spain, a country which largely retains the land patterns imposed by General Franco's fascist regime. It's time we realised: this land is not your land, from Land's End to the Scottish Highlands. It is theirs.
Squatting stories 2, or, sexual problems of the disabled
I went downstairs last night to make a cup of tea (!) and the talk is of parties again, these stinking asexual ketamine-fuelled joyless robot parties which my associate stroke contemporaries are such connoiseurs and devotees of. -So what's the news about the trouble at the party? -Yeah ___ had her phone stolen, innit? That's why no one can reach her. (This last bit is interesting enough to be repeated to several different people on the phone several times over.) Yeah, can you Jesus fucking Christ imagine? Yeah can you JESUS FUCKING CHRIST SAY SOMETHING FUCKING INTERESTING???
A dizzying wave of nausea hits me. I lean out of the rear window, swallow vomit, and start singing the Finnish national anthem but realise I don't remember the words so I hum it but it's over before the kettle has boiled. I mumble words to myself, something rhyming, I need to fill my ears with something, I'm mumbling some sort of rhymes to myself...
So let me tell you about this house, then. Before us, but after the alchemist of C__ Road left the country twenty years ago, this house was occupied by an organisation called SPOD. SPOD means Association to Aid the Sexual and Personal Relationships of People with a Disability, a self-explanatory description of their function. The original acronym comes from:
SPOD = Sexual Problems Of the Disabled
This is an absurdly appropriate description of what it is like here now, I think sourly. Houses certainly do retain some sort of energy... I think of the magnificent Hoxton house, originally a hostel for getting child prostitutes off the streets (but that's another story)... I think of the haunted house in Highbury Fields which didn't like us (but so is that)...
SPOD, the only organisation of its kind in the UK, was hounded out of existence by an indifferent, unsympathetic and at times downright malicious local council and health authority. Or, as an email they sent me has it (I am leaving out the really vitriolic stuff about the council because it might be slander or libel or something):
A dizzying wave of nausea hits me. I lean out of the rear window, swallow vomit, and start singing the Finnish national anthem but realise I don't remember the words so I hum it but it's over before the kettle has boiled. I mumble words to myself, something rhyming, I need to fill my ears with something, I'm mumbling some sort of rhymes to myself...
What do you see when you stare in the headlights, yourAnd like this. Or something. Finally the kettle boils.
Nerves are exploding with white blasts of starlight
Voices are screaming and pleading to vacate the
Place where you’re standing to placate the hatred...
You’re screaming your hatred it feels like it’s wasted
The sounds of the parties the women you’ve tasted
The freedom you fought for is given to
Pasty-faced leeches who feed on the victories you’ve tasted
People you’ve hated return from the shadows
To haunt your depictions of far-away places...
So let me tell you about this house, then. Before us, but after the alchemist of C__ Road left the country twenty years ago, this house was occupied by an organisation called SPOD. SPOD means Association to Aid the Sexual and Personal Relationships of People with a Disability, a self-explanatory description of their function. The original acronym comes from:
SPOD = Sexual Problems Of the Disabled
This is an absurdly appropriate description of what it is like here now, I think sourly. Houses certainly do retain some sort of energy... I think of the magnificent Hoxton house, originally a hostel for getting child prostitutes off the streets (but that's another story)... I think of the haunted house in Highbury Fields which didn't like us (but so is that)...
SPOD, the only organisation of its kind in the UK, was hounded out of existence by an indifferent, unsympathetic and at times downright malicious local council and health authority. Or, as an email they sent me has it (I am leaving out the really vitriolic stuff about the council because it might be slander or libel or something):
No one actually does what we did. SPOD closed mainly because disabled people in the UK and their organisations and charities are like the rest of UK society - they dont want to deal with sexuality at all.I have started opening the mail that still arrives here for SPOD. If I open it, it is in sensitive, understanding hands... Letters written in shaky, uncertain hands... I am disabled and lonely (so am I, goddamnit), can you send me information about your services... Some letters I return to senders, when I can, with a note informing them of the sad demise of SPOD... Today I got this:
Dear Sir or Madam, I am a student... Much of my work as a student midwife will be based upon research projects into services such as which you provide... etc...I took the trouble to type out a proper response, especially as there was an SAE enclosed, encouraging Miss ___ ___ to include in her dissertation an examination of this society's attitude to people who believe everyone, including the disabled, have the right to a fulfilling sexual and social life. I also invited her to drop round for tea, coffee, wine or cocktails any time. But she won't, because I guess from the tone of her letter that she's not adventurous. In that sense, she's just like the people I live with. (There is one shady character who is the exception here, but you know who you are.)
5.2.05
Friendship and censorship on the net
"Please make sure you remove my blog's link from yours." -Email from _____ of _____If they are your private thoughts that you want no one else to read then why the fuck are you publishing them on the internet?
[redacted]
The irony of this response from someone who always told me: "Share your thoughts and the whole world becomes your notebook." From someone I have heard so many times complaining in frustration about how unwilling/unable the people around us are to interact, to mesh with other people's minds, to exchange information and ideas.
This is some sort of bullshit that I would expect from the frightened and easily-alarmed ones.
[redacted]
Call it what you wanna call it...
... I'm a fuckin alcoholic.
"I feel sorry for people that don't drink. When they wake up in the morning, that's the best they'll feel all day." Frank Sinatra, apparentlyI woke up two hours ago tired, hung-over, depressed, disillusioned and horrendously lonely but I'm feeling much better already.
3.2.05
Squatting stories, or, the alchemist of C____ Road
These people who have the good fortune to live with Lazy are in a sensibly cautious head-space. I'm not in that head-space at all. I throw caution to the winds - throw it to the winds in buckets, in great armfuls. This comparison between us is occasioned by my musings on the strange story of the alchemist of C_____ Rd.
He would like a room here. This well-spoken silver-haired gentleman first appeared from nowhere one morning in the summer, recently returned from 20 years in Italy, accompanied by who turns out to be his brother, both tanned and in straw hats.
-How can we help you? we politely enquired. -Well, actually, I own this house, he said. -No, the council do, we said, and were met with what seemed like genuine incredulity.
The story: this gentleman, Mr _____, did indeed once upon a time own this house, until his estranged son forged a signature in order to sell it during his long absence from the country. The moniker "alchemist of C____ Rd" originates in an anecdote he told. Involved in a property dispute in a county court, he had filled the space on the court forms for "occupation" with "alchemist".
"Alchemist?" enquired the judge - you will have to imagine the accent and the sudden incredulous squint over peery-downy county court judge bifocals yourself.
"Yes, alchemist. I take base metal - ie lead - and convert it into gold - ie money." This by operating the old model soldier shop near the Imperial War Museum in Lambeth.
The alchemist, we believe, is immensely wealthy, at least compared to ourselves. Certainly his portfolio of restored medieval properties in Italy is impressive. Now, he wishes to have a room in our house, our humble squat, in order to be able, as an occupant, to muddy the legal waters and involve the council in a protracted battle over ownership. In return, he will pour any amount of money into this house, which, dear as it is to us, is crumbling and decaying even as I type, and under the shadow of two (or is it three?) magistrate's warrants for London Energy to come and finally disconnect the power...
The cautious, sensible and easily-alarmed ones object. They don't want to let him get involved.
Hahahaa!! What the fuck are you scared of? ____ is going to start showing up with his posh friends and playing loud jazz and drinking red wine at 4am when you need to get up for work?
______ and his posh gang are going to surround you on the stairs and intimidate you, my dear?
He would like a room here. This well-spoken silver-haired gentleman first appeared from nowhere one morning in the summer, recently returned from 20 years in Italy, accompanied by who turns out to be his brother, both tanned and in straw hats.
-How can we help you? we politely enquired. -Well, actually, I own this house, he said. -No, the council do, we said, and were met with what seemed like genuine incredulity.
The story: this gentleman, Mr _____, did indeed once upon a time own this house, until his estranged son forged a signature in order to sell it during his long absence from the country. The moniker "alchemist of C____ Rd" originates in an anecdote he told. Involved in a property dispute in a county court, he had filled the space on the court forms for "occupation" with "alchemist".
"Alchemist?" enquired the judge - you will have to imagine the accent and the sudden incredulous squint over peery-downy county court judge bifocals yourself.
"Yes, alchemist. I take base metal - ie lead - and convert it into gold - ie money." This by operating the old model soldier shop near the Imperial War Museum in Lambeth.
The alchemist, we believe, is immensely wealthy, at least compared to ourselves. Certainly his portfolio of restored medieval properties in Italy is impressive. Now, he wishes to have a room in our house, our humble squat, in order to be able, as an occupant, to muddy the legal waters and involve the council in a protracted battle over ownership. In return, he will pour any amount of money into this house, which, dear as it is to us, is crumbling and decaying even as I type, and under the shadow of two (or is it three?) magistrate's warrants for London Energy to come and finally disconnect the power...
The cautious, sensible and easily-alarmed ones object. They don't want to let him get involved.
Hahahaa!! What the fuck are you scared of? ____ is going to start showing up with his posh friends and playing loud jazz and drinking red wine at 4am when you need to get up for work?
______ and his posh gang are going to surround you on the stairs and intimidate you, my dear?
"Oh I say, are you a squatter?" (Again, you just have to imagine the accents...)I don't know his motives. Not money. Maybe he has read the stories of squatters keeping multi-million pound properties through adverse possession and thought: I want to try that. He a chancer. He adventurous. He doing it just for the fuck of doing it, for the stories to tell about it later. Like Lazy in that respect. Although I can't know for sure... Perhaps the easily-alarmed ones are right and he has secret plans. So what? You are going to lose this place sooner or later... whether to the council or to the alchemist is somewhat immaterial... So let's go with the alchemist...
"_____'s a squatter too, you know..."
"Yes, he's squatting his own house, imagine..." Ho ho ho...