Closing time

I'm at a party--I'm lying--On the couch--Sleeping--Dead to the world. Guys and dolls, I only caught a couple hours last night. I'm over-and-out-tired. I've spent the day in Temple--in the square--the square with the fountain--learning to waltz--many of us learning. At the party the girl I came to meet tonight has called in sick, a shoulder injury. I am all alone and watching a boy trapped in the body of a vole, gangly and frolicking he preens and parades his tales. I send her a text message, she sends one back, I send one back. It's pretty funny. So funny in fact she says she's coming to join me. An hour later we sit on the sofa together by side and watch the vole. On he prances and flounces with stories of singledom that hold the room enraptured with detention. Tiredness draws me like the curtains and I start to nod off. She goes to make small talk with the others, I shut my eyes. At a quarter to twelve I stir and think about the last train home. She makes no signs of leaving. I consider the abandonment, so briefly, then immediately offer to wait and walk her home. I return to the couch and sleep like a potato. In the quiet a clock slices the seconds off one by one, schluck schluck. She wakes me and we split. It's one am. I walk her home. On the night bus, hours later, I am a heap, a vessel of possesions for any to dip in and out of. The bus stops and leaves me stranded, alone with nothing but the music filtering through my ears before the batteries cut out. In New Cross Gate at 4am in the day-glow of a night that never comes, I try to get not shot as I wait for the bus. None come along all at once. The time passes with the traffic. Later my ride arrives and I catch it(,) finally(,) almost home. As I pad the last few hundred yards I take off my shoes and socks and feel the concrete through my feet, the cold stone gently warming my conciousness.

Respire

Shuppa shuppa. Hey, I am writing something cheery and uplifting today. Things have been a bit down in the dumps and it's time that changed. So what to write? Not quite sure. Err. Well, I got a new bed yesterday, a double bed! So that's good. Also a friend of mine emailed me a voucher for 2 for 1 at Wagamama's, which made me happy. And... yeah. Wappa wappa. Why is there nothing more boring than contentment? In the darkness of the black times the goodness is swallowed up, hope is extinguished and we languish in our inner city pity. Likewise the good days set ablaze all shadows of sadness, flooded by the sun the sore memories dim faster than light. We live on see-saws, happy happy sad sad, up and down. Is the cost of the darkness worth the fruit of the light? A question with no answer when you need it, forever asked at the wrong times. All is temporary, all is transient: the now is then, and the then is when. Very Zen. Anywhen, as I walk and wind through the station pm, I pull the headphones from my ears, I raise my eyes from the ground, I scope the environment and for once I relish the oft forgotten sensations of alive-ed-ness. Surrounding me are the thousand rustles and ruffles of people living their lives, the tick tock of the pock pock of the heels on the steel of the stairs stirs me deeply; it occurs to me that things are not so bad. In fact they're pretty good.

The Darkening

I have a temptation: I want to obliterate and annihilate, I want to drink cheap white wine by the bottle and suffer the burning, to swallow my old blue friends and share in the dampening, the muffled and the muted. I run the sink and wash my face, opening my eyes under the water. I will torch the memories, I will plunder and devastate them, I will raze the ground behind me, level it with such ferocity and scorch the earth so down trodden. These stalks and chaff and husks are scattered before me now, all will be burnt in pyres of purification. And once the choking smoke has cleared I will gaze out over the blackened rubble and the decimated desert to feel nothing.
Instead: I will put a glass over my candle and suffocate the flame. Slowly my oxygen will deplete, and I will cease this feeling, there will be no anesthetic and pain will not be numbed. I turn my music up, I drown the voices out, I bump shoulders with the hopeless, I raise my lowered eyes and see sunken gazes and worn souls, I feel the swirl of dejection sucking me down and I start kicking. There is a light here, somewhere there is a light, put the batteries in the torch man and flick the switch, there is a light, find it before you lose your sight. Stay in the dark too long and you'll forget you're there.

Off balance

'and i need you more than want you
and i want you for all time' -- Johnny Cash

I am in a house I’ve never been to, eating pasta, cooked for me by a woman I’ve never met. An eight year old boy sings Tom Waits- ‘I like my town with a little drop of poison’. Blink and I miss it. I go to work. I am funny tonight, really funny, the funniest I’ve been for a long while. After it is over I, the strayer, hang out with the long players, but my thoughts return to the previous sunset and her smile as we talked and filled the ashtray. I listen to the voices and they tell me how great and wonderful I am, feeding my ego with reckless abandon, chucking him juicy raw steaks with no thought for his bloating waistline. I sink back and watch, I know nobody, and everybody knows me. I will take this time home with me, this happiness tainted by its solitude. Another snapshot to lie dormant, gathering neuronic dust in my library for one. Memories breathe through shared experiences, alone they are like fish in the ocean, might as well be dead. There is scar tissue on my soul, layers of dead skin, yellowed and calloused. I have forgotten where my core is, I swear a lot, I am falling off my log frog, being with these people reminds me of where I left myself. But introspection is irrevelant for now, for now I am the amusement, I am here to make you laugh, listen to my stories of loss and desolation and scorn me. I blend in and out, I am the socialiser of the forsaken, tell me your secrets, flirt and hurt with me, you will never see me again. We are complicit and I suck you into my emptiness like a black hole [that does card tricks].

Don't listen to the voices

I woke up today with a bruise on my eyebrow. My eyebrow?! And I ask myself the question I hear every thirty seconds at work, How did I do that? It looks like I've headbutted the corner of my bed. Strange, but beside the point. The point is that I found enlightenment this morning on the 8.32 to London Bridge. Trying as I was to read my novel, I became more and more distracted and agitated by the number of foreign conversations taking place around me. Some physical, some cellular, all grating like nails on a chalkboard. Now I'm pretty sure this is no xenophobia as I've grown in up in the multicultural melting pot of south east London, and my father is originally from Singapore. So it puzzled me as to why these voices were setting me simmering on the edge. And then at 8.37 precisely, I see the light, the cause, the click- I am unable to eavesdrop. By chit-chatting a language of foreign tongue, these people are depriving me of my god-given right to pry. Why would they take this small pastime of mundanity from me? It is all that keeps me sane on this ten-minute railroad to nowhere.

Just then through the hubbub, one voice starts to stand out, distinct because of the repetition like a glass being tapped at a wedding. 'Good morning, Dell computers, how can I help?' Over and over she intones, a pilgrim mounting a one-woman call centre, 'Have you tried restarting? Is the monitor plugged in? Please hold. I'm afraid you've come through to the wrong department, I'll just transfer you.' But here's the twist. Our lady has no phone, no mobile, no headset, no bluetooth. Just wild eyes and a waving arm. And as she call handles at full volume, people shuffle and avert themselves from her frenzied gesticulations, and I register the insanity of our everyday lives, removed from context and displayed here for all to see.

Wrong Number

...then my phone starts ringing, I'm on the train and my phone starts ringing. I know, I know, I hate this. I have complained about people talking on their phones before, I know, I get it. But I'm a hypocrite so I answer it- I could lie and pretend I didn't but I'm a seeker, a truth teller, so I'll shoot straight- it rings and I answer it.

Well I try to.

It malfunctions and the answer button stops working, the phone just keeps ringing and now everyone is looking at me like i'm some kinda idiot because i can't shut the damn phone up from ringing and i hit the buttons with my fingers and i stab the digits with my digits but it does no good and the commuters are looking at me in disgust as the noise polluter that i have become and i'm sorry everyone i can't control it it is controlling me and then-

a message appears: 'database error'

what database?

it's a phone...

How can you have a database? i ask, you're a phone!

it switches itself off

it serves me right

Sight unseen

Lost: 1 pair of sunglasses, light and dark blue frames, black lenses, answers to the name of 'shades', sorely missed, reward for information leading to recapture.

Today I did something very very stupid. Very stupid indeed. I changed my shirt on the tube and left my sunglasses on the seat. My Alain Mikli sunglasses. The best glasses a boy could ever have. Ship. Fug fugging shippy fugger. I can't even begin to tell you how amazing they were. For a start they had prescription lenses, which meant not only did I look outstandingly cool, but I could look outstandingly well! And boy, did I look good in those frames. Man, the girls seriously dug me in those bad boys. And they were polarised (the lenses not the girls), so I could even see in the dark! (although I didn't look quite so cool at night times, or on the tube) Most importantly though, we had many years of shared memories, like a faithful lapdog they accompanied me through some dark times. I wore them 24/7 during the infamous prescription drug episodes of '03/'04, they managed to take that all important edge off the day, and enabling me stagger dangerously from street to street, sweating and stammering. Above all they were just one of the nicest things I owned, a pure piece of luxury. Whilst donned, no matter how much I tried, I just could not be miserable or uncool. But now it is all over, I am Jamie without his Magic Torch! Macbeth without his Lady! The Lone Ranger without his Tonto! (Wait a minute, why was he the Lone Ranger if he had a partner?) I am really blue. I miss them, so much. And as they were a princely 300 golden nuggets, it's not exactly an option to repurchase them. I have reported them missing, but of a recovery, chances are slim. So if anyone has a spare chunk of change knocking about, feel to donate it to the 'Sight for Sore Eyes' van der Put Memorial Benevolent Fund.

Icy Dead People

A girl named hannah boarded the bus, the number 12. Paying his fare with twelve coins he sat on the twelth seat from the front and paid no attention to the twelve people, eyes wide and staring, waiting for his next move like rats in a plague. Coughing twice, he took out the day's paper, the news-paper, and scanned the job section with a badly chewed biro (red ink, black lid), circling each vacancy consisting of 36 characters or less. Four more stops passed, he engaged the bell and disembarked. Stepping out on to the pavement he took one left and seven paces and sat down. At that moment his non-progress was halted by the ring of his cellphone. 'Hello,' he said, 'A girl named hannah speaking, how may I help?' For a moment all that could be heard was a faint scratching noise, then 'Son?' replied the voice, which turned out to belong to his paternally estranged father lost presumed drowned in a tragic boating accident during the Namibian War of Independence. Briefly, a girl named hannah considered that this was the first time in 42 years he had heard this parental voice. Then he hung up. At that moment a child walked by in blue shorts and white socks, chocolate spilt on his fresh-pressed shirt. The parent or guardian accompanying this boy stopped for pause to take in the sight of an eye-window display. The young one, a boy named snow, so precariously poised as he was to the hero of our story, felt a slight tickle in his nostril. Causing his pausing from the consumption of a chocolate cone, a sneeze cast itself forth, accompanied by the accumulated mucus derived from Snow's large intake of lactose. A sumptious splash of oral ejaculation hit a girl named hannah full in the face, nestling into the crows feet of his eyes. Carefully he removed his pocket handkerchief, freshly ironed that very morning for such an occasion, and wiped his crevices. Deciding it was time to make a stand, he stood and took 48 paces forward, paused, and stepped out in front of a bus. The number 12. At the precise instant before impact he felt his phone one more time begin to vibrate, and as his body was flung through the air like a cast-off scarecrow, he hummed along to the opening beeps and tones of Für Elise, a particular favourite of his. A girl named hannah landed with a bounce and a slap, and there lay dormant, the straw contortionist. The mobile cellular device stopped ringing. A pause followed. Then, 37 seconds after initial impact, the mobile cellular device resumed its tolling.

Talking of crows...

13 things you didn't know about crows, from the well-known and respected website, 'For the Love of Crows'.
With supplimentary comments to the author from john.

1. Crows are believed to be the most intelligent of all birds.
How do you know this? Have you caught them reading Proust? Or wearing glasses?

2. There is no way to tell by physical appearance alone, as to whether a crow is male or female.
You could just wait to see who mounts who.

3. A crow can easily identify another crow in the distance, during the day, because black is very visible during the day.
Yeah... and also crows do tend to look reasonably alike, they're not too easily mistaken for a Chihuahua for example.

4. Crows will eat just about anything.
What do mean anything? Cars? Marzipan? A small child? How worried do we have to be here?

5. Crows are very social in nature.
In what context? Are they your regular drinking partners? Are you basing this on a tendency to sit around in groups and caw a lot, because you could then say the same for builders.

6. The male will fluff his feathers, strut, and fly by, in his attempts to win over the female.
I'm a bit unnerved now, do you dress up and enact this? or just film it? How far do your feelings go?

7. Once mated, crows usually mate for life.
Sure, they all say that at the beginning, but don't you listen to him! Those crows will say anything to get their beaky way.

8. There are currently only 14 Hawaiian crows in the wild.
Are you sure this isn't the same crow flying past 14 times with a colourful shirt on?

9. Crows will often gather together and mob an offending or intruding owl or hawk.
Who is writing this? Are you an actual crow that learned to type? Is this a threat to birds everywhere? Because it's unlikely they'll read it.

10. Crows are extremely intelligent, quite possibly the most intelligent of all birds.
Only 'quite possibly' now? What happened? Did you just see a crow banging his head on the glass or drinking bleach or something?

11. It has been recently discovered that crows have been making use of tools in their daily activities.
I'm sorry what? And what kind of tools? Spanners? Rakes? Powerdrills?

12. Crows have an extremely good memory, 'A crow never forgets'
I think you might mean an elephant. Not to worry, they are easily confused. For future reference there is an easy way to tell them apart: tickle their soft feathery underbelly and if you get stampeded to death, it's probably not a crow.

13. Crows have been known to be able to count.
...and now you've crossed the line. Counting crows? It's the name of a band, not a scientific fact. Don't you think crows have better things to do than count? Actually they probably don't. Hmmm... fair point. If I was a crow I might take up a hobby.

Even the crows mock me

'everything is full of you,
everything is wrong' -- Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

I wake this morning light headed and fuzzy to find myself contorted and misshapen on my shoulder, a position that has created a dull ache that will trickle steadily down my righthand side throughout the day. Passing a mirror on the stairs I notice my eyes are dark and sunken, swollen rings surrounding them. I drink a pint glass of tepid tap water and stumble into my clothes. Later as I attempt to write in a library, two friends complicate their mundanity in a bid to alleviate the repetition of a life drifting them by. Repeatedly one says to the other 'at the end of the day yeh-'. Repeatedly the other replies 'I'm not being funny right, but-'. I wish to inform her that I and the rest of the world realise she is making no attempt at humour. She continues. The constant restating of assertions is setting me on edge. As they overly dramatise and tragically romanticise their simple lives of little lies I recall something a monk once said to me, 'we get annoyed most by those who most remind us of ourselves'. I am stuck in my world of Dawson's Creek love, forever questioning the unquestionable, gaining interest when and if a love appears doomed, then seeking out the unavailable. I'd give up but it's too much effort. It is four post the meridian and the shadows of my day are growing longer. I am on the tube now, trying to catch a few moments sleep by pushing my face up against the glass. I listen to rich succulent words, a deep resonant voice that restores and fills me with pieces, lucidly I realise I have fallen asleep. I see her in my footsteps, and try to move on.

n.b. I would like to point out that the above post can be considered ironic, I have cleverly blown my slight melancholy out of all proportion to show the pomposity and absurdity caused by too much self-analysis and cod-philosophy. In reality I have breath, I have food, I have a roof, everything is a-ok. Like all of us I have good days and bad days, swings of polarity often without good reason. I find it hard to believe just how dependent our emotional stability is on our fragile shell of a body, a bad cheese sandwich sometimes the one and only cause of a deep depth of despondent despair. It is strange how life seems so much more interesting in the dark times. For now though, I just want you to know that I am fine, I am happy, I am ok. I will try and write more positively in the future. I just miss her is all.

Lake Placid

Currently I find it is not good for me to be away from water. I'm not talking about a glass of water here, or the availability or supply of water, obviously that is not good for most people. I'm talking about large bodies of water, rivers, lakes, ponds etc. Recently I have been making much use of London's proximity to the Thames. I don't know why this is, but some days I find myself on edge for no particular reason, and a walk by the riverside, or a stroll across a bridge settles that. A couple of weeks ago I walked a friend home from the theatre, and ended up in stranded in Wapping having missed the last train. After a few false starts I found my way to Tower Bridge and ended up walking to Waterloo along the bank. It was 1am and deserted, and in the hour that it took me I passed four people and a large rat. I have not felt so much at peace for a very long time, and as I wandered along I started talking to God like a crazy person. See I'm quite a hippy Christian, for me, God is love and love is God, I talk a lot about positive and negative energies, I believe anything negative or guilt-ridden is not truly from Him but the other side. I'm sure this leaves me in danger of watering down the message, or getting side-tracked, but I'd rather sit on that side than the fundamental. There are enough people shouting at the world in judgement, I have no wish to be one of them. Love and peace man, more of it.

Table for one?

As we speak I’m in the middle of writing two essays, in other words I am updating my blog, pootling on the internet, playing solitaire, and generally finding any possible procrastination to avoid the scribing of 3000 words. It's not all bad though, the rediscovery of solitaire has reminded me of an obsessive crisis I underwent whilst playing this life-waster. When indecision presented itself with the possibility of multiple choices, i.e. the option of two red sixes both available to move, my small and frightened little intellect couldn’t deal with the implications. Whatever option I went for, I would torment myself for the next hour and a half thinking I had chosen wrongly. It got to the stage where I had to set myself some unbreakable ground rules to take the decision out of my hands. For example in the above case, I would always move the card furthest to the right. By restricting myself in this way I was able to continue wasting my evenings on this game as I had mastered my own destiny by providing a rigid structure and was no longer a victim to chance. In retrospect, I am surprised that this spread no further than the computer screen, it sounds like I was one small step from acquiring significant compulsive tendencies. But then again OCD sounds like it requires an awful lot of discipline and, like taking up smoking, I probably wouldn't have the will power.

fine lines

In the folds of your paper let her go, he says to me, his hood drawn darkly over his head. He tears two squares of thick cream paper from the tan notebook he carries for such times as these, and, passing one to me, he begins to fold. I follow his shaking seasoned hands as they crease and tuck line after line, pursuing form and finality. She is no more to you than the dust, and you have no claim on her. If you should catch the wind in a glass it will become but stale air, this is how you must think of her now. I shift my feet and they crunch on the stone and sand. I long for balance, yet I know that it was not enough for me to have her acquaintance, to share her with others. It is possession I want, to own her, and she me. And at that moment I see my futility. As humbled as you feel now, there is still an element of pride in you. You should lose that, it is pulling inside you, so do not feel proud; feel happy instead, feel peace, you have stood firm and revealed your self, your true self. I turn and look across the river, the line of cold grey buildings stand on tiptoes reaching for the shadowed sky with their slender fingertips, the prison of their concrete extending to the heavens. We know not why others fail to return our gift so preciously given, but it is their choice alone, and we must allow our presents to be squandered, to be clasped and forgotten. Our cranes take shape, and we feel our way to the finishing touches. Running a finger over the wing of his work he raises his head and his grey eyes meet mine. We walk to the waterfront, and as we place our paper birds on the gently lapping water they nudge our feet a few times before floating away. Some words come to me:

'if i should meet a hundred people, i shall remember you first

if i should leave a thousand people, i shall forget you last'

I sit for a moment on stone steps, and watch the water soak through my allegory, gently unfolding it and carrying it to the river bed. The wait lifts from my shoulders, but by now he has left me, a presence in times of need but no more.

Check

Sixty-four squares of black and white, no shades of gray, twenty-four pieces in opposition, in limitation, in collaboration, leaving two people in one bubble. Chess is one of those truly beautiful ideas, a base concept that if shared by two people can break all ground and cause a friendship to be struck up solely on the basis of a well timed castle. For me, it ranks up there with a deck of cards for flexibility and longevity, and as a magician who flicked cards four hours a day, that's saying something. But chess I play not enough, and when I do I realise how much I miss it. The last few weeks I've had a couple of games and I'm itchy for fresh challenges (people tend to stop playing after losing thrice in an hour). I will be honest and admit I do have one grand theory on chess, a scheme of tactics I stick by no matter what, and you'll be surprised to hear I'm happy to give it away. It boils down to one command: play the best move possible on the next turn. It's foolproof, never let me down, and has the rather large advantage of releasing you from the worry of tactics, strategy or long term game plan, leaving you free to converse at leisure with your opponent. This not only serves to distract them from their game, but because their mind is not on the dialogue, barriers fall wide open and out slips a whole range of guarded information.

That reminds me, click here for a radio sketch by myself and the incredibly talented Simon Judd.

Internal Fire

We are the only two who know, you and I. I lay here unknown to all the others, quiet and safe and small, but each day I grow more and more, each day you hide less and less. I won’t tell if you don’t, but soon they will know. And they will stare at you open mouthed and whisper behind turned backs. But hold on to me and never let me go, not just yet, let me remain a few months and I will sit quiet. Hush hush. That reminds me, I am hungry again. Sorry. Would you mind a sandwich? Pickled onions and cheese please. I know you don’t like pickled onions, but I do, I really do. They remind me of- well I don’t know, when I’m older, more experienced, more external, I will come up with a reference point. For now I just really want that sandwich. I promise I’ll only make you vomit twice a week if you say yes? Come on, please? I don’t think you have any idea of the pressure I’m under here you know. I am having to ask myself some very probing philosophical questions here. Do you know how worrying it is not knowing what I was doing three months ago? Surely I can’t have just popped into existence from nothingness. Perhaps in a previous life I was a cat playing too close to the road, or a mayfly in June... I must have been doing something though right? Unless I’ve been hanging around in dark places this whole time, separated before birth, one half pottering around in your ovaries, while its drunken male counterpart saunters about with the semen, waiting to get lucky. Now I come to think of it I have been feeling slightly dislocated... do you think I might be schizophrenic? Or am I just being paranoid? Is paranoia a sign of schizophrenia? Hello? Am I going to be ok? Can you even hear me? I Am The One Tugging Your Umbilical Cord! Ah forget it. [Sigh] Do you think you could move the lamp a little nearer? There are things I need to shine a light on, and I'm finding it very difficult to continue with my writing in here.