No, reading for me is something more like beginning a relationship. It is total freedom, anarchy. That’s what I love about reading. It’s why I love prefaces, introductions, prologues, forwards, all the layers you are invited to peel off before you see the meat of the book. It’s like foreplay. The preface invites you in – come get to know me better. It’s the delicious, arch, conversation with someone you know will let you enter their intimate spaces later. Some author’s introductions are quirky – this is not how I feel now, but it was true then so I have let it stand. And that’s how love should be. We were (I pray) totally in love with each of our former lovers. That made us who we are now. Although that is now past, it’s not true to say we don’t love them anymore. Those passions lie quite close to the skin, we are palimpsests of past loves. How I hate writers who revise.
Some books don’t bother to tease and entice. The short book you can’t put down, like a one night stand. So exciting. Nothing wrong with that. And then the books you have to protect yourself from. Better double-bag your mind or you’ll start talking like those brutish men who seem so necessary in that thriller/crime novel world. Don’t let yourself share too much with them. Wouldn’t want to act that way. God forbid you start to write that way.
Then you have those special books that take a long time to read. At the end you stay up late into the night, desperate to reach the conclusion and reluctant to let go. Strangely like the moment of orgasm – inevitable but also (for unfortunate men anyway) the sign that, for tonight, this experience is almost over.
Some books we return to again and again. They nourish us. It’s fruitful. They shape our action, thoughts, inspire new writing. Our faithfulness to these partners in procreation is limited. We still stray to many other partners. But those big, important books always welcome us back, confident of their rank on our private top ten. Like a lover we’ve known for years – different every time, but always like coming home. I like to be promiscuous. I’ve got lots on the go at once. The book-me, the book-mark, slips inside the covers of many volumes. Nudging through the opening pages into the intense union offered inside.
Sometimes I’m playing a part. In this book I can be a woman. In another I can imagine what it’s like to be a “man” (ugh). Some books offer the delight of voyeurism. No need to get too close. Just watch this!
Each book is a conquest. We kiss and tell, we boast. Have you been there? Did you enjoy it? So many books, so little time. How delightful when you read something no-one’s heard of. A secret love.
Perhaps we are questing for a book that would be constantly satisfying. One we’d never finish, never want to leave. A book written for me alone. An unwritten, impossible book. The unattainable.
Friday 2 March 2007
Powers
It was dark. Richard waited for his eyes to adjust but nothing happened. It was a darkness too complete. He felt as if he was under the earth but with no sense of confinement. It was cool and breezes were coming from different directions at random intervals. Richard re-closed his eyes and opened them again. No difference. He was scared and could not move. He realised now that he was sitting on a dry surface, hugging his knees to his chest. He could have been sitting on a pillar, or on the floor of a huge cave or the cell of a drafty dungeon. Richard wished there was a light, then realised he didn’t want to see. It was better not knowing what was happening.
It seemed as if some time passed. He felt hungry, but not tired. His eyes were filled with light as if from a strobe. He wondered if this was some reaction from his optic nerve to being in total darkness. The burst lasted for a fraction of a second, but left an after-image. Richard moved his head and the burnt shape blurred through purples and golds. Within the etched after-glow he could see some darker areas. Now they looked like black eyes. They stayed fixed no matter how he moved his head. It was the same with eyes open or shut.
Richard closed his eyes and tried to think about something else. No use. He hypothesised that the image of a face had been projected on to him by some powerful machine. Now his retinas were smoothing themselves. That was how he imagined them – like those children’s toys that are a matrix of metal rods in a frame. Push your hand or face into them and produce a 3-D model of yourself. Shake the rods back and you can start again. Everything was on its way back to black. But as it faded, Richard saw a reddish image of a face. It was her.
When Richard was growing up, there was a thalidomide boy in his road. Flids, they called them. Name of Kevin. The name stuck in his mind because of that song: my perfect cousin. They used to tease him. This Kevin was far from perfect. Short limbs. The hands looked unfinished, like some seedling interrupted in its secret uncurling; mis-formed fingers bent back against the forearm. He was scarred too, from some kind of surgery, perhaps. Richard never asked him.
He told them a tale about the secrets of his body. They listened intently, unable to judge if he was telling the truth. He said that when he was with a girl, his body shrivelled even more, enlarging his penis, gorging it with borrowed body-mass. It seemed plausible at the time. This differently-made body, more plastic than our own perhaps, ready to assume another form. He was a kind of super-hero. Like Daredevil – receiving powers in return for his lost sight. A kind of cosmic, karmic compensation. Richard wondered if he was due some kind of compensation. What had he lost? She didn’t belong to him. But then the notional perfect pair of arms had never belonged to Kevin either.
The flat was dirty. The air hung heavy in the rooms, he could see dust in the air of the bedroom. As he looked down the hall into the kitchen, he could see crumbs on the working surface. They were more visible from this angle than if he had been looking right at them. Richard undid and removed his trainers. He pulled off his socks and stepped into the coolness of the bathroom to toss them into the washing basket. The lino felt cold against his toes; he was relieved to be out of his shoes. His t-shirt clung to his back a little as he removed it. He moved into the kitchen and got polish and a duster ready, placing them in a corner just outside the door. So that he wouldn’t have to come back in once the floor was wet. He filled a pint glass with water and put it on a coaster on his desk in the second “bedroom” of the flat, which he used as a study and shrine room.
Now ready to begin, Richard took everything off the long worktop surface along the back wall of the flat: kettle; toaster; mug-tree. He put them behind him, on the smaller piece. He took the dishcloth and spray and cleaned down the empty space. [add hob] Now he moved everything back and repeated the process for the rest of the room. He bleached the sink and cleaned draining rack and washing-up bowl. He swept the floor and then mopped it. Although no one else was in, he angled the mop across the kitchen doorway, to keep any feet off the clean wet floor.
He cleaned methodically. As his mother had taught him. Always in the same order. The routine ensuring nothing is missed, freeing the mind for other things. He stopped for a few gulps of the water and realised he could have some music on. Cleaning topless somehow made it seem a far more male activity. Like a kind of exercise. A ritual purging. He was hungry. Cleaning made him hungry, always. Once the main rooms had been dusted, he got the hoover from its place in the hall and vacuumed the carpeted areas. He listened with interest to the noise of particles being swept up into the machine. As he did this job he remembered his mother hoovering. He’d be sat on his chair (the one on which he always sat and underneath which he was allowed to keep a few toys during the week). As she passed he’d raise his legs and she’d go underneath. Richard attended to which areas were the dirtiest and considered why there was more to pick up in some places. Crumbs dropped where he sat to eat a sandwich, pieces of fluff where he got dressed. Richard bent down to pick up a thread which the hoover could not disentangled from the fibres of the carpet. His stomach felt slimy with sweat as he bent double. Glancing over at the bed he remembered her hanging down, letting her head flop towards the floor as he sat there, complimenting her on the complex patterns of her irises. He moved each of the chairs, the table in his study. He hoovered over each of the areas he’d uncovered, noting the indentations left by legs and casters, putting everything back just where it was. Around his shrine there was quite a bit of ash, from incense he’d burned. He cleaned it thoroughly.
The bathroom was last of all. He placed every moveable object on the carpet in the hall as he sprayed and wiped the surfaces. He paused to urinate before bleaching the toilet, sweeping and mopping the floor. The shampoo, toothbrushes, deodorants and so on would have to stay on the carpet until the lino was dry. Richard reflected that, despite his thoroughness, millions of her cells would still be present in the flat. On his desk, tidy now, in a pile of books and a few loose sheets of paper he spotted a note she’d written. A reference to something she’d read, an article by Marvin Minsky she wanted to track down. She never dotted her ‘i’s. Writing at speed, a desire to get the main points down, not worrying yet about the details. Like a builder getting big, firm, but rather rough-textured foundations down.
He’s finished. He lights and incense stick and places it upright in a small bowl of sand. The flat is clean and permeated with fragrant smoke.
When he was 19, Richard thought the world was a matriarchy. Thatcher, his mother, the queen. At university, the female tutors were the most exciting. They had the freedom to be unconventional in dress which male academics did not, or did not embrace. He was painfully aware of his dependence on the bounty of females for any introduction into the arcane world of sexual experience. While he was able to express his feelings well in language, they had physical mastery. He took it for granted that they would make the first move. It seemed a form of violence to come on to a girl. He was aware of the threat he might offer, although in pictures of himself he was appalled by the pronounced curve of his neck (not a stoop exactly) and the way his bony hands suggested indecision. He had a horror about exerting excessive force. Something about growing up in the 1980s. All the crimes performed by men. All the rage and inadequacy worked out upon the bodies of women. Sex used as a power move. Men who never questioned the irrational bias of older relatives towards male offspring and had carried that superiority complex directly into the bedrooms of their first lovers.
His first lover had dominated him totally. He felt this was right. Men had sinned, he would pay, make up for it. For the world was no matriarchy, how quickly that became obvious when he allowed himself to be conscious of the reality beyond his family and school life. Even there, in the laboratories he noticed with pain the excess deference he received simply on account of his maleness. So he waited for her. She instructed him how to give pleasure. She laid her thin body out on the bed and her thin lips invited him to join her. He was honoured to share her bed, on whatever terms. He massaged her, listening carefully to instructions about speed, pressure and position. He waited. It was like a game of twister. He held himself above her, suspended on one arm and both knees while his hand worked. He touched her. She referred to her vagina as her monster. She asked him to go fast, hard. Richard was surprised – had thought the whole thing should be gentler. She paid him compliments: he was like a statue. So silent. She taught him how to kiss her there. The monster was bony. As her rhythm crested, he rode the bruising shudders, bashing his teeth through his lips. She came and he felt momentarily cleansed. Her orgasm like communion, purging him of sin and welcoming him into the fold. He gave without asking anything. He waited. She looked at him naked, handled him. Her eyes were steel blue and her kiss was fierce. His lips, tender from being clamped to her through orgasm, bled under the pressure of her teeth and mouth. She never guided him inside her and he never asked her. He waited. This was how he loved.
It seemed as if some time passed. He felt hungry, but not tired. His eyes were filled with light as if from a strobe. He wondered if this was some reaction from his optic nerve to being in total darkness. The burst lasted for a fraction of a second, but left an after-image. Richard moved his head and the burnt shape blurred through purples and golds. Within the etched after-glow he could see some darker areas. Now they looked like black eyes. They stayed fixed no matter how he moved his head. It was the same with eyes open or shut.
Richard closed his eyes and tried to think about something else. No use. He hypothesised that the image of a face had been projected on to him by some powerful machine. Now his retinas were smoothing themselves. That was how he imagined them – like those children’s toys that are a matrix of metal rods in a frame. Push your hand or face into them and produce a 3-D model of yourself. Shake the rods back and you can start again. Everything was on its way back to black. But as it faded, Richard saw a reddish image of a face. It was her.
When Richard was growing up, there was a thalidomide boy in his road. Flids, they called them. Name of Kevin. The name stuck in his mind because of that song: my perfect cousin. They used to tease him. This Kevin was far from perfect. Short limbs. The hands looked unfinished, like some seedling interrupted in its secret uncurling; mis-formed fingers bent back against the forearm. He was scarred too, from some kind of surgery, perhaps. Richard never asked him.
He told them a tale about the secrets of his body. They listened intently, unable to judge if he was telling the truth. He said that when he was with a girl, his body shrivelled even more, enlarging his penis, gorging it with borrowed body-mass. It seemed plausible at the time. This differently-made body, more plastic than our own perhaps, ready to assume another form. He was a kind of super-hero. Like Daredevil – receiving powers in return for his lost sight. A kind of cosmic, karmic compensation. Richard wondered if he was due some kind of compensation. What had he lost? She didn’t belong to him. But then the notional perfect pair of arms had never belonged to Kevin either.
The flat was dirty. The air hung heavy in the rooms, he could see dust in the air of the bedroom. As he looked down the hall into the kitchen, he could see crumbs on the working surface. They were more visible from this angle than if he had been looking right at them. Richard undid and removed his trainers. He pulled off his socks and stepped into the coolness of the bathroom to toss them into the washing basket. The lino felt cold against his toes; he was relieved to be out of his shoes. His t-shirt clung to his back a little as he removed it. He moved into the kitchen and got polish and a duster ready, placing them in a corner just outside the door. So that he wouldn’t have to come back in once the floor was wet. He filled a pint glass with water and put it on a coaster on his desk in the second “bedroom” of the flat, which he used as a study and shrine room.
Now ready to begin, Richard took everything off the long worktop surface along the back wall of the flat: kettle; toaster; mug-tree. He put them behind him, on the smaller piece. He took the dishcloth and spray and cleaned down the empty space. [add hob] Now he moved everything back and repeated the process for the rest of the room. He bleached the sink and cleaned draining rack and washing-up bowl. He swept the floor and then mopped it. Although no one else was in, he angled the mop across the kitchen doorway, to keep any feet off the clean wet floor.
He cleaned methodically. As his mother had taught him. Always in the same order. The routine ensuring nothing is missed, freeing the mind for other things. He stopped for a few gulps of the water and realised he could have some music on. Cleaning topless somehow made it seem a far more male activity. Like a kind of exercise. A ritual purging. He was hungry. Cleaning made him hungry, always. Once the main rooms had been dusted, he got the hoover from its place in the hall and vacuumed the carpeted areas. He listened with interest to the noise of particles being swept up into the machine. As he did this job he remembered his mother hoovering. He’d be sat on his chair (the one on which he always sat and underneath which he was allowed to keep a few toys during the week). As she passed he’d raise his legs and she’d go underneath. Richard attended to which areas were the dirtiest and considered why there was more to pick up in some places. Crumbs dropped where he sat to eat a sandwich, pieces of fluff where he got dressed. Richard bent down to pick up a thread which the hoover could not disentangled from the fibres of the carpet. His stomach felt slimy with sweat as he bent double. Glancing over at the bed he remembered her hanging down, letting her head flop towards the floor as he sat there, complimenting her on the complex patterns of her irises. He moved each of the chairs, the table in his study. He hoovered over each of the areas he’d uncovered, noting the indentations left by legs and casters, putting everything back just where it was. Around his shrine there was quite a bit of ash, from incense he’d burned. He cleaned it thoroughly.
The bathroom was last of all. He placed every moveable object on the carpet in the hall as he sprayed and wiped the surfaces. He paused to urinate before bleaching the toilet, sweeping and mopping the floor. The shampoo, toothbrushes, deodorants and so on would have to stay on the carpet until the lino was dry. Richard reflected that, despite his thoroughness, millions of her cells would still be present in the flat. On his desk, tidy now, in a pile of books and a few loose sheets of paper he spotted a note she’d written. A reference to something she’d read, an article by Marvin Minsky she wanted to track down. She never dotted her ‘i’s. Writing at speed, a desire to get the main points down, not worrying yet about the details. Like a builder getting big, firm, but rather rough-textured foundations down.
He’s finished. He lights and incense stick and places it upright in a small bowl of sand. The flat is clean and permeated with fragrant smoke.
When he was 19, Richard thought the world was a matriarchy. Thatcher, his mother, the queen. At university, the female tutors were the most exciting. They had the freedom to be unconventional in dress which male academics did not, or did not embrace. He was painfully aware of his dependence on the bounty of females for any introduction into the arcane world of sexual experience. While he was able to express his feelings well in language, they had physical mastery. He took it for granted that they would make the first move. It seemed a form of violence to come on to a girl. He was aware of the threat he might offer, although in pictures of himself he was appalled by the pronounced curve of his neck (not a stoop exactly) and the way his bony hands suggested indecision. He had a horror about exerting excessive force. Something about growing up in the 1980s. All the crimes performed by men. All the rage and inadequacy worked out upon the bodies of women. Sex used as a power move. Men who never questioned the irrational bias of older relatives towards male offspring and had carried that superiority complex directly into the bedrooms of their first lovers.
His first lover had dominated him totally. He felt this was right. Men had sinned, he would pay, make up for it. For the world was no matriarchy, how quickly that became obvious when he allowed himself to be conscious of the reality beyond his family and school life. Even there, in the laboratories he noticed with pain the excess deference he received simply on account of his maleness. So he waited for her. She instructed him how to give pleasure. She laid her thin body out on the bed and her thin lips invited him to join her. He was honoured to share her bed, on whatever terms. He massaged her, listening carefully to instructions about speed, pressure and position. He waited. It was like a game of twister. He held himself above her, suspended on one arm and both knees while his hand worked. He touched her. She referred to her vagina as her monster. She asked him to go fast, hard. Richard was surprised – had thought the whole thing should be gentler. She paid him compliments: he was like a statue. So silent. She taught him how to kiss her there. The monster was bony. As her rhythm crested, he rode the bruising shudders, bashing his teeth through his lips. She came and he felt momentarily cleansed. Her orgasm like communion, purging him of sin and welcoming him into the fold. He gave without asking anything. He waited. She looked at him naked, handled him. Her eyes were steel blue and her kiss was fierce. His lips, tender from being clamped to her through orgasm, bled under the pressure of her teeth and mouth. She never guided him inside her and he never asked her. He waited. This was how he loved.
ADEC
“It is a simple game, played by men and boys worldwide.”
Mark looked at Dan intently, aware that he was about to discuss something intimate, secret and delightfully dirty. It was a measure of their alienated and sophisticated attitude that they could discuss such matters. Between them, no subject was taboo.
“It is called the All Day Erection Challenge, or ADEC. As the name suggests, the aim is to keep one’s penis in a state of at least semi-tumescence for the whole day.”
Mark took over here. As smoothly as the fourth man in a relay team, he seized the gristly baton of this deliciously risqué topic.
“Merely observe idle men in public spaces and you will see everywhere the adepts of ADEC. The man on a bus who touches the fly of his trousers – so swift is the movement that only a trained eye will spot it. He is delivering the minimum stimulation necessary so as to keep his pecker up.”
Dan picked up the thread without missing a beat: “A less subtle practitioner of the art can often be seen rummaging in a pocket slightly more than is reasonable. He is twitching himself back into excitement. Something has almost destroyed his concentration. Perhaps the sight of an old, feeble, man has made him consider, for a crazy moment, the possibility that he will one day be weak and impotent.”
“Of course, most ADEC masters are above such obtrusive techniques,” continued Mark. “They allow themselves to brush against pneumatic ladies ahead of them in carefully selected supermarket queues. They touch themselves unnoticeably with elbow or briefcase. Some have developed other strategies, even more cunning. One of the most common, known as ‘the flap’, simply involves a gentle, rhythmic, opening and closing of the legs.”
“The uncircumcised man,” began Dan, warming to his theme, “knows with certainty that if he retracts his prepuce and wears his most abrasive underwear (the ones with that slightly ragged seam) he will be reminded constantly of a comforting bulge until morning coffee at least. Some men slip their organ under their pant elastic. The firm constrictive pressure can delight for extended periods. However, it is the mind which is the ADEC addicts most precious ‘tool’. A good fantasy is superior to any of the more grossly physical techniques.”
“Throughout the ages, women have commented that men appear to be mentally undressing them. Of course, the reality is far more exciting than that. Men mentally fondle, cup, part and penetrate myriad women daily. The basic principle is to work with the material to hand. Scan the office, the waiting room, the bus or the gym. Select the woman who, at that moment, is the hottest. You are now free to imagine yourselves in any number of exquisite embraces. Some romantic types form an attachment to a specific woman and prefer to hold her image up to their inner eye. Others take a savage delight in visualising how they would encounter all the women in their immediate vicinity, so inexhaustible and egalitarian are their appetites.”
“Most members of the male race never stop to reflect on why they act this way. Do you question why you breathe? Here is my theory. We swell to feel our maleness. My argument is designed to be simple; you may find it tautological. Without a firm stirring in our loins we risk feel like nothing at all. Our bodies have not evolved to create life. We are fruitless, marginal beings, doomed to watch the magical narrative of ovulation and menstruation, child-bearing and child-birth, from the wings, like some unnecessary Greek chorus. Our erections remind us that we exist and matter. Those choric ejaculations may seem trite and banal, telling us what we already know, ours, however hidden or misdirected, are charged with meaning.”
They rested for a moment, exhilarated by their talk. They looked up at their teacher simultaneously. She was a fine woman, whose nipples were clearly visible through her long-sleeved t-shirt. How is anyone supposed to get any work done when she’s dressed like that? Nipples on bonk. Phasers on stun. I’m there. My slender stalk reaching inside as she rides, allowing her breasts to hang into my face as I crunch up, trying with a supreme effort of will to make this moment last, just seconds longer. I’m there. I feel her squeeze and let go.
Mark looked at Dan intently, aware that he was about to discuss something intimate, secret and delightfully dirty. It was a measure of their alienated and sophisticated attitude that they could discuss such matters. Between them, no subject was taboo.
“It is called the All Day Erection Challenge, or ADEC. As the name suggests, the aim is to keep one’s penis in a state of at least semi-tumescence for the whole day.”
Mark took over here. As smoothly as the fourth man in a relay team, he seized the gristly baton of this deliciously risqué topic.
“Merely observe idle men in public spaces and you will see everywhere the adepts of ADEC. The man on a bus who touches the fly of his trousers – so swift is the movement that only a trained eye will spot it. He is delivering the minimum stimulation necessary so as to keep his pecker up.”
Dan picked up the thread without missing a beat: “A less subtle practitioner of the art can often be seen rummaging in a pocket slightly more than is reasonable. He is twitching himself back into excitement. Something has almost destroyed his concentration. Perhaps the sight of an old, feeble, man has made him consider, for a crazy moment, the possibility that he will one day be weak and impotent.”
“Of course, most ADEC masters are above such obtrusive techniques,” continued Mark. “They allow themselves to brush against pneumatic ladies ahead of them in carefully selected supermarket queues. They touch themselves unnoticeably with elbow or briefcase. Some have developed other strategies, even more cunning. One of the most common, known as ‘the flap’, simply involves a gentle, rhythmic, opening and closing of the legs.”
“The uncircumcised man,” began Dan, warming to his theme, “knows with certainty that if he retracts his prepuce and wears his most abrasive underwear (the ones with that slightly ragged seam) he will be reminded constantly of a comforting bulge until morning coffee at least. Some men slip their organ under their pant elastic. The firm constrictive pressure can delight for extended periods. However, it is the mind which is the ADEC addicts most precious ‘tool’. A good fantasy is superior to any of the more grossly physical techniques.”
“Throughout the ages, women have commented that men appear to be mentally undressing them. Of course, the reality is far more exciting than that. Men mentally fondle, cup, part and penetrate myriad women daily. The basic principle is to work with the material to hand. Scan the office, the waiting room, the bus or the gym. Select the woman who, at that moment, is the hottest. You are now free to imagine yourselves in any number of exquisite embraces. Some romantic types form an attachment to a specific woman and prefer to hold her image up to their inner eye. Others take a savage delight in visualising how they would encounter all the women in their immediate vicinity, so inexhaustible and egalitarian are their appetites.”
“Most members of the male race never stop to reflect on why they act this way. Do you question why you breathe? Here is my theory. We swell to feel our maleness. My argument is designed to be simple; you may find it tautological. Without a firm stirring in our loins we risk feel like nothing at all. Our bodies have not evolved to create life. We are fruitless, marginal beings, doomed to watch the magical narrative of ovulation and menstruation, child-bearing and child-birth, from the wings, like some unnecessary Greek chorus. Our erections remind us that we exist and matter. Those choric ejaculations may seem trite and banal, telling us what we already know, ours, however hidden or misdirected, are charged with meaning.”
They rested for a moment, exhilarated by their talk. They looked up at their teacher simultaneously. She was a fine woman, whose nipples were clearly visible through her long-sleeved t-shirt. How is anyone supposed to get any work done when she’s dressed like that? Nipples on bonk. Phasers on stun. I’m there. My slender stalk reaching inside as she rides, allowing her breasts to hang into my face as I crunch up, trying with a supreme effort of will to make this moment last, just seconds longer. I’m there. I feel her squeeze and let go.
Towers
“if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off and cast them from thee” Matthew 18.8
Richard felt exhausted. The sangha couldn’t help him, he realised. Traditionally, the seeker has to endure some delay before receiving the teaching. Sometimes it’s little more than a formality – you have to wait outside the monastery for a day or two without food. It demonstrates determination, a real hunger for the Dharma. In Milarepa’s case he had to build towers. Marpa made him build towers and then tear them down again. Back-breaking work. Soul-destroying. Each stone felt as heavy as his bad deeds. Each tower three-storeys tall. Strong. Surely this time Marpa would be satisfied. But no, actually he wanted the tower in a different part of the field. Worse than Sisyphean labour. In his case gravity played the destructive part. But Milarepa had to pry each stone from its bed and hurl it down to the ground. Each thud shook the earth. What was Marpa playing at? Was this supposed to provide an outlet for his rage? It enraged him. His hands blistered. Was he paying a price for his murders? And then his blood thickened with fear. For how could any amount of playing around with stones make amends for the blood on his hands? Maybe it was meant to destroy his soul, or at least his ego. His submission to this task demonstrating the death of the selfish person who had killed rather than suffer in the past. Richard felt dizzy with fear; knowing that Mark had been at his talk on Milarepa – he’d been impressed by the story. Had he influenced the young man? Yes. Mark’s reading of the story was wrong-headed. As if you would set out to emulate Milarepa: developing homicidal powers with a view to turning it all around and becoming enlightened later. That was partly the appeal of the story. No-one wants to be mediocre, on the spiritual path any more than in any other arena. Better to be a great sinner and then a great saint than to muddle along, working in meditation, working on the self. Because that was what it was, so much of the time. Meditation just another thing on that long list of things to do. Eat well, exercise, read, keep up with the news, support a charity, get into some new music, get really good at your job, keep your house nice, stay in touch with your friends, forgive your parents. How quickly we prune that list. Richard reflected on the years when he did no exercise for almost the whole winter. Somehow in those months he felt the need to stay indoors, eat more and put on a little insulation. The same with meditation. When under pressure at the lab he stopped altogether. All that stuff about maintaining a practice seemed a luxury when put against meeting deadlines. Work. Work. Sorry.
So maybe Mark needed to suffer. Maybe he had even sought that out. But I am responsible too (Richard couldn’t escape the thought) I linked killing and Buddhism in his mind. How else could such a link have been made. It’s my fault she’s dead (no, don’t think about that). I set him going. An impressionable young man. Really it would be better never to do anything. Why does every action I take seem like violence? How did it end up hurting her? It is I who should atone. I need to suffer in order to be worthy of the truth. The Truth. The truth I was finding with her. A truth about sex, about male violence, about my own rage. Can I transform all that male evil force into love through an esoteric practice? What you set your heart upon, that you become. Mark wanted to be Milarepa. He was well on the way. I choose Tara. I want to be a green-skinned embodiment of compassion. My foot off the moon-mat, ready to step into the world to help whoever. Yes, even him. Green-skinned, female. I am not a man, I am a person with a penis. A good gender-studies soundbite. What if what’s wrong with me does reside in my sex organs? What you set your heart upon, that you become.
Richard, not sure of himself but full of self-hatred and wishing to rid himself of hatred. Richard, not setting a precedent, not inviting followers in his road of self-abnegation, self-purification, self-mutilation. Richard, setting his heart upon something perhaps impossible (as enlightenment too, seems impossible much of the time) took a sharp knife.
And you know what happens next. Because I’m guessing that if you’re a woman or a girl there have been times when you’ve wanted to hit where it hurts. Yeah, maybe we are the violent ones, but revenge is different. Take those weird, unbodylike growths out of the sack. What’s it about anyway? Horrible outside genitals in a wrinkly bag. Something wrong there. All you do is slit the sack. They’re only held on by some pretty minor plumbing. A couple of swipes and they’re gone. Better flush those bad eggs, you never know what they can do at the hospital nowadays, bet they’d sew a rapist’s cock back on out of some misguided idea of the right thing to do. Yeah, stick those murderer’s hands back on. He’ll never do it again. Lesson learned. Yessir. Boys, I know you’ve cradled them when they’re swollen and sore from denial. Take them out. They feel like tumours already. Malignant ones. Take them out. They’re where the bad thoughts come from. You know it. You know what happens next. He operates on himself and successfully removes the cancer that makes him sick. He destroys them utterly. With the last strength that remains he calls for an ambulance. Guiltily. Blood on the phone keys as he stabs the 9s. Shouldn’t be wasting their time on me. I did it to myself. But I don’t want to die yet. This is just the start of the experiment. What you set your heart upon. I will be Tara. I shall work for the benefit of sentient beings, but not in a male body. Green-skinned eunuch bodhisattva of compassion. I will sing a sweeter song than the castrati. Ordeal? Check. Ready for the Dharma!
He let the ‘phone drop from his hand. Pain. Thudding, welling. It scared him like being lost on the hills, miles from your car or anywhere. You panic. I don’t know if I can get through this. I can’t see and end to this. Just pain though. The body sending you a message. Big problem here. Still, that’s dealt with. What was it Simone Weil said – something like nothing on earth can stop us thinking clearly. And to think clearly now is the way to transform this moment from suffering into metamorphosis.
Pain. The pain is black smoke. This pain is worse. It’s like particles suspended in the air. Sharp, crystalline. Black razor fragments. Never mind that. Breathe it in. Suck it in, like a fag, like poison. But I am medicine for the sick. Within my heart is a brilliant white light. The white light absorbs the dirty blade shards. It destroys them, it transforms them into itself, into purity. Another breath in. More particles. This time it’s like dust. Like walking into an old bookshop. The white light laughs at the cloud of dust. Absorbs it, transforms it. Now there’s not much of the sooty stuff left. It’s like a lover breathing on you. Her smoky breath - the cigarette smell you might normally gag on somehow tastes exciting. In the metaphor the white light is lust, consuming the death smoke like a candle absorbing a smell. But now it’s diamond-like awareness. Firmly rooted loving-kindness. Swallowing the pain.
Richard isn’t in a meditation position. He can’t put his limbs into a prescribed arrangement. He’s flat out on the floor. The phone beside him is still live. He doesn’t hear the voice telling him someone’s on the way. He can’t respond.
He allows everything to go away. Blue sky. Emptiness. Shunyata. The void that is ultimate reality. He allows it all to dissolve, like salt in water. Except this is real dissolution. It’s annihilation. The flat’s gone. His chair. The shrine. His stereo. All gone. Not transformed even. Just faded out, leaving only blue sky. His books are gone. Memories slip away, like labels from cans left soaking in the washing-up. And thoughts too, the bit of his brain that makes those crazy images, always putting one thing with another. Making patterns. It’s gone into the pure cool blue. The blue is electric. It’s like cyberspace. Unreal. Everywhere.
Out of the empty sky, out of the electronic void, grows a lotus. Pale blue. It spreads its petals to reveal a moon-mat. So smooth, perfectly round. Looking like something you might eat. Looking like a mint. On the mat is Tara. I am Tara. Green. Born of Avalokiteshvara’a tears. Sixteen. My body is made of green light. It’s empty. Perfectly pure. I am smiling and beautiful. My right foot steps down, my right arm hangs down readyy to help all beings, a posture of supreme giving. That old thing I used to identify with is long gone. That damaged and damaging set of needs and fears has dropped into the blue sky, vanished like a star in the sunrise. A star that will not re-appear on any future night. And Tara begins to sing her mantra. Om tare tuttare ture svaha. She sets the words dancing round her infinitely compassionate, beautiful heart.
Richard is carried out of the flat into an ambulance. The mantra letters of the manta circle his heart like the ring of a kaleidoscope. Looking into the eyepiece you would be able to see rainbows. Tara, the swift rescuer. Tara, the saviouress. The paramedics listen to the strange muttering. Om tare. The kaleidoscopic ring rotates anticlockwise. What’s that he’s saying? Ture. Rainbows begin to pour out from his heart. It’s like a visual on a LSD rush, those moments when you can see things that are not normally visible to the human eye. Is he on drugs? Tuttare. The green body is filled with rainbow light. God, he’s made a mess of himself. Poor bastard! Ture. The body is purified by the light. Svaha. Richard has left the house of the senses. Tara, elfin princess, takes his place.
The mantra at Tara’s heart now begins to emit more light. The surgeons sew him up. The new wound will leave a scar, parallel to the seam where his body joins up between penis and anus. Om. Rainbows pour from Tara’s heart. Tare. Wherever a rainbow touches someone all their sufferings, physical and mental, are annihilated. Tuttare. Richard is taken out of surgery. Is the patient singing? Ture. Infinite compassion propagates from her heart like the light from the sun. Svaha. The universe is full of rainbows.
Tara wakes. She leaves the hospital. She walks to the prison. We are all prisoners in the world of samsara. She renews her vow to the Bodhisattva ideal. I will not leave until all beings have been released.
Richard felt exhausted. The sangha couldn’t help him, he realised. Traditionally, the seeker has to endure some delay before receiving the teaching. Sometimes it’s little more than a formality – you have to wait outside the monastery for a day or two without food. It demonstrates determination, a real hunger for the Dharma. In Milarepa’s case he had to build towers. Marpa made him build towers and then tear them down again. Back-breaking work. Soul-destroying. Each stone felt as heavy as his bad deeds. Each tower three-storeys tall. Strong. Surely this time Marpa would be satisfied. But no, actually he wanted the tower in a different part of the field. Worse than Sisyphean labour. In his case gravity played the destructive part. But Milarepa had to pry each stone from its bed and hurl it down to the ground. Each thud shook the earth. What was Marpa playing at? Was this supposed to provide an outlet for his rage? It enraged him. His hands blistered. Was he paying a price for his murders? And then his blood thickened with fear. For how could any amount of playing around with stones make amends for the blood on his hands? Maybe it was meant to destroy his soul, or at least his ego. His submission to this task demonstrating the death of the selfish person who had killed rather than suffer in the past. Richard felt dizzy with fear; knowing that Mark had been at his talk on Milarepa – he’d been impressed by the story. Had he influenced the young man? Yes. Mark’s reading of the story was wrong-headed. As if you would set out to emulate Milarepa: developing homicidal powers with a view to turning it all around and becoming enlightened later. That was partly the appeal of the story. No-one wants to be mediocre, on the spiritual path any more than in any other arena. Better to be a great sinner and then a great saint than to muddle along, working in meditation, working on the self. Because that was what it was, so much of the time. Meditation just another thing on that long list of things to do. Eat well, exercise, read, keep up with the news, support a charity, get into some new music, get really good at your job, keep your house nice, stay in touch with your friends, forgive your parents. How quickly we prune that list. Richard reflected on the years when he did no exercise for almost the whole winter. Somehow in those months he felt the need to stay indoors, eat more and put on a little insulation. The same with meditation. When under pressure at the lab he stopped altogether. All that stuff about maintaining a practice seemed a luxury when put against meeting deadlines. Work. Work. Sorry.
So maybe Mark needed to suffer. Maybe he had even sought that out. But I am responsible too (Richard couldn’t escape the thought) I linked killing and Buddhism in his mind. How else could such a link have been made. It’s my fault she’s dead (no, don’t think about that). I set him going. An impressionable young man. Really it would be better never to do anything. Why does every action I take seem like violence? How did it end up hurting her? It is I who should atone. I need to suffer in order to be worthy of the truth. The Truth. The truth I was finding with her. A truth about sex, about male violence, about my own rage. Can I transform all that male evil force into love through an esoteric practice? What you set your heart upon, that you become. Mark wanted to be Milarepa. He was well on the way. I choose Tara. I want to be a green-skinned embodiment of compassion. My foot off the moon-mat, ready to step into the world to help whoever. Yes, even him. Green-skinned, female. I am not a man, I am a person with a penis. A good gender-studies soundbite. What if what’s wrong with me does reside in my sex organs? What you set your heart upon, that you become.
Richard, not sure of himself but full of self-hatred and wishing to rid himself of hatred. Richard, not setting a precedent, not inviting followers in his road of self-abnegation, self-purification, self-mutilation. Richard, setting his heart upon something perhaps impossible (as enlightenment too, seems impossible much of the time) took a sharp knife.
And you know what happens next. Because I’m guessing that if you’re a woman or a girl there have been times when you’ve wanted to hit where it hurts. Yeah, maybe we are the violent ones, but revenge is different. Take those weird, unbodylike growths out of the sack. What’s it about anyway? Horrible outside genitals in a wrinkly bag. Something wrong there. All you do is slit the sack. They’re only held on by some pretty minor plumbing. A couple of swipes and they’re gone. Better flush those bad eggs, you never know what they can do at the hospital nowadays, bet they’d sew a rapist’s cock back on out of some misguided idea of the right thing to do. Yeah, stick those murderer’s hands back on. He’ll never do it again. Lesson learned. Yessir. Boys, I know you’ve cradled them when they’re swollen and sore from denial. Take them out. They feel like tumours already. Malignant ones. Take them out. They’re where the bad thoughts come from. You know it. You know what happens next. He operates on himself and successfully removes the cancer that makes him sick. He destroys them utterly. With the last strength that remains he calls for an ambulance. Guiltily. Blood on the phone keys as he stabs the 9s. Shouldn’t be wasting their time on me. I did it to myself. But I don’t want to die yet. This is just the start of the experiment. What you set your heart upon. I will be Tara. I shall work for the benefit of sentient beings, but not in a male body. Green-skinned eunuch bodhisattva of compassion. I will sing a sweeter song than the castrati. Ordeal? Check. Ready for the Dharma!
He let the ‘phone drop from his hand. Pain. Thudding, welling. It scared him like being lost on the hills, miles from your car or anywhere. You panic. I don’t know if I can get through this. I can’t see and end to this. Just pain though. The body sending you a message. Big problem here. Still, that’s dealt with. What was it Simone Weil said – something like nothing on earth can stop us thinking clearly. And to think clearly now is the way to transform this moment from suffering into metamorphosis.
Pain. The pain is black smoke. This pain is worse. It’s like particles suspended in the air. Sharp, crystalline. Black razor fragments. Never mind that. Breathe it in. Suck it in, like a fag, like poison. But I am medicine for the sick. Within my heart is a brilliant white light. The white light absorbs the dirty blade shards. It destroys them, it transforms them into itself, into purity. Another breath in. More particles. This time it’s like dust. Like walking into an old bookshop. The white light laughs at the cloud of dust. Absorbs it, transforms it. Now there’s not much of the sooty stuff left. It’s like a lover breathing on you. Her smoky breath - the cigarette smell you might normally gag on somehow tastes exciting. In the metaphor the white light is lust, consuming the death smoke like a candle absorbing a smell. But now it’s diamond-like awareness. Firmly rooted loving-kindness. Swallowing the pain.
Richard isn’t in a meditation position. He can’t put his limbs into a prescribed arrangement. He’s flat out on the floor. The phone beside him is still live. He doesn’t hear the voice telling him someone’s on the way. He can’t respond.
He allows everything to go away. Blue sky. Emptiness. Shunyata. The void that is ultimate reality. He allows it all to dissolve, like salt in water. Except this is real dissolution. It’s annihilation. The flat’s gone. His chair. The shrine. His stereo. All gone. Not transformed even. Just faded out, leaving only blue sky. His books are gone. Memories slip away, like labels from cans left soaking in the washing-up. And thoughts too, the bit of his brain that makes those crazy images, always putting one thing with another. Making patterns. It’s gone into the pure cool blue. The blue is electric. It’s like cyberspace. Unreal. Everywhere.
Out of the empty sky, out of the electronic void, grows a lotus. Pale blue. It spreads its petals to reveal a moon-mat. So smooth, perfectly round. Looking like something you might eat. Looking like a mint. On the mat is Tara. I am Tara. Green. Born of Avalokiteshvara’a tears. Sixteen. My body is made of green light. It’s empty. Perfectly pure. I am smiling and beautiful. My right foot steps down, my right arm hangs down readyy to help all beings, a posture of supreme giving. That old thing I used to identify with is long gone. That damaged and damaging set of needs and fears has dropped into the blue sky, vanished like a star in the sunrise. A star that will not re-appear on any future night. And Tara begins to sing her mantra. Om tare tuttare ture svaha. She sets the words dancing round her infinitely compassionate, beautiful heart.
Richard is carried out of the flat into an ambulance. The mantra letters of the manta circle his heart like the ring of a kaleidoscope. Looking into the eyepiece you would be able to see rainbows. Tara, the swift rescuer. Tara, the saviouress. The paramedics listen to the strange muttering. Om tare. The kaleidoscopic ring rotates anticlockwise. What’s that he’s saying? Ture. Rainbows begin to pour out from his heart. It’s like a visual on a LSD rush, those moments when you can see things that are not normally visible to the human eye. Is he on drugs? Tuttare. The green body is filled with rainbow light. God, he’s made a mess of himself. Poor bastard! Ture. The body is purified by the light. Svaha. Richard has left the house of the senses. Tara, elfin princess, takes his place.
The mantra at Tara’s heart now begins to emit more light. The surgeons sew him up. The new wound will leave a scar, parallel to the seam where his body joins up between penis and anus. Om. Rainbows pour from Tara’s heart. Tare. Wherever a rainbow touches someone all their sufferings, physical and mental, are annihilated. Tuttare. Richard is taken out of surgery. Is the patient singing? Ture. Infinite compassion propagates from her heart like the light from the sun. Svaha. The universe is full of rainbows.
Tara wakes. She leaves the hospital. She walks to the prison. We are all prisoners in the world of samsara. She renews her vow to the Bodhisattva ideal. I will not leave until all beings have been released.
Bookcrossing
It’s a cold day in September. She is walking a buggy through the park at 8am. No shops are open yet, but if she stays indoors with him for another hour she’ll go insane. In the buggy Edward is chewing on a hard biscuit attached to a clip with a string. It’s supposed to help with teething. She breathes deeply.
The air is damp and you can smell plants. No idea what their names are. Dave sets off for work at 7. He has a long drive to work, in Halifax. We could move closer, but you’ve always liked it here. The schools are better here. It hasn’t rained but the pavements are a dark shade of wet tarmac. The rhythm of the buggy is soothing to mother and child. Is it the same Mclaren who make Formula One cars?
Ahead of her an old couple are walking along. They wear the brown and beige waterproof coats of the old. Where do they get them from? Never seen them in a shop. Probably years old from C&A, BHS, other long-defunct department stores. He’s walking is irregular. One leg seems stiff and he’s dragging that foot through the arc of his stride, effortfully. The woman links arms with him. Her hair is thin, curly and grey. They are here every day. They carry food for the wild birds and from time to time they stop and scatter some, like a story-book farmer broadcasting seed. Or that parable. Some falls on stony ground. Some dies. They do this every day. Faithful to the birds, linking arms as she supports him on this walk which must be really good for his mobility. Wonder what’s wrong with him. Is it a false leg? He can’t be old enough to have been in the war, can he. Old men always make her sad. Sometimes seeing them alone, in their formal dress as they walk up to the chemist – wearing a suit and tie to do the shopping – makes her cry.
They stop at a railing next to the water and feed ducks bread. She overtakes them, peering into the large cuboid plasticised canvas bag the woman carries. In it are a couple of fat-balls. She’s seen the woman tying them on to trees. Fat balls for the wild birds in the park. Raided by squirrels too.
She glances over at the swings as if looking into her future. There’s one child there already with a parent who, like her, has abandoned the house early this morning. The woman stands near the climbing frame spotting the child as it scales some netting.
She’s moving down the slope now. Letting the steepness take control of her, her feet slapping down harder now. The slope makes it easy to peer down at Edward who’s soothed by the motion of the buggy and is peaceful. Someone is running along the road at the bottom of the valley. A woman alone, wearing headphones – an I-pod in one of those trendy arm things. There’s a bench down here where she usually sits down. Should bring a flask. Should bring my MP3 player. Why don’t I remember. Dave’s put some new music on it. He takes a can of lager out with him, putting it in the baby-bottle holder as he goes up-hill, steering with one had and drinking as he goes along the flat. Probably get arrested: drunk in charge. Half the town is a no-drinking zone anyway. But you can’t tell him anything, of course. Another runner passes the woman from the other direction. They nod at each other, the courtesy of people with a shared passion. A random connection. The man stops near to her bench and puts something down. Doesn’t look like litter. How strange! Wonder what it is?
Sophia rounds onto the flat just as the runner crosses the path she’s come down. She looks down at the palms of her hands. Someone told her once that that blotchiness means that you are exercising well, extremities well oxygenated or something. All this walking: it’s good. Must weigh myself. Should give Trace a ring. Wonder if she still goes to the gym. They have a crèche, don’t they? Or a swim would be nice. Just once a week, perhaps. It’s nice, doing this route. You notice things: the changes in the weather, the way the air tastes in different months. How the trees grow.
On the bench is a ziplock bag. There’s a book inside. This is strange.
Inside the back, outside the book is a brightly coloured slip of paper. On in is printed the legend “Book-crossers Scatter Sunshine”. The letters have been shaded across in a sort of rainbow of pencil-crayon. It looks childlike. Sophia parks the buggy, puts the brake on and sits down. Eddie is asleep. She opens the bag. Sophia’s hair is a rich dark brown, curving into her jaw, shelving up towards that pointy bit at the back of her head. Dave likes this style of bob: it accentuates her nape. Sophia allows herself to enjoy the sound of the word “nape” with her mind’s ear.
No-one is watching her. The bookcrosser ran past after leaving the bag here. Sophia opens the bag and takes the book out. It’s a funny-looking book. Not like a real book. It seems a bit home-made. The cover is un-illustrated and there’s no blurb. The title of the book is “Read Me” - like a magic object in Alice in Wonderland. Sophia wonders what transformation will occur if she obeys the book’s imperative.
Are you reading me? Before radio, before telephones, there was this low-tech telepathy. I write and you read my mind. In return I have a glimpse of the thoughts in your mind – mostly guess-work but there’s some hope I’ll be right about how you’ll react to my words. I might have written in another language. I might be dead, but in this encounter we are intimates.
Sophia reads. In the morning sunshine, her hair is shiny. She crosses her feet at the ankles and reaches out with one hand to rock the buggy gently, but Eddie is out like a light. The light is dappled by its path through the leaves of the tree near which the bench is sited. Sophia’s mouth is slightly open and the tip of he tongue rests lightly behind her top front teeth. Now she draws her hand back from the buggy and her shoulders relax as she takes a deeper breath and settles herself on the bench. Now the book is resting on her lap, cradled comfortably in both hands and she gives herself up to it.
In the story, a boy and a girl are flirting.
I don’t know why we are doing this. No actual kissing. She moves her lips over mine, touching but not softening or opening into a kiss. This is torture. But we’re not ready yet. I smell her skin. Warm clothes on a cold day. Autumn; she smells like September afternoons. Gold, cold, clean days, walking out into fallen leaves.
Sophia notices the wide spread of the book, her thumbs on the margins. Sophia allows herself to feel the excitement of a first kiss. On page 7, the two characters are kissing goodnight.
She’s wearing a red dress. They’re on the drive of a house. It’s not her parents’ place – she’s a lodger here. It’s a hot summer evening. The fact that they have been for a meal in a restaurant, that they are saying goodnight on a doorstep, all this makes this moment suddenly significant.
Sophia imagines the scene, which could so easily have been from her own life, years ago. The thrill of a kiss when a kiss is as far as things are going, for now.
She likes to kiss in pubs. It’s quite early and we meet in a pub in town. I buy pints of dark beer. She leans across and kisses me hard on the mouth. I close my eyes, because I am self-conscious. Now the bitter is staring to work and I don’t care. It’s wonderful. I really don’t care who sees. I can smell her foundation , tiny particles dislodged by the friction of this kiss. I sniff it in. This is her smell: a mixture of he body’s signature and the make-up she uses. It’s unique. I’d know her in seconds anywhere. When I think of her it’s in the act of kissing blindly in public.
Sophia moves her left thumb into the centre of the book, pinching the spine so the book stayed open. She touches her mouth. She’s thinking about kissing for the first time in years. In the story the boy is staying the night at his girlfriend’s house for the first time.
Her mother doesn’t allow boys in her room, so you sleep on the sofa. It’s hard to get to sleep. It’s a strange room. The smells of her mother’s cooking, her scent and the cleaning products she uses. Like a patina left on the surface of everything – the deposit left by their lives on the fabric of the rooms. But in the night she comes to you. It’s dark, so dark in the living room. You can’t say anything, for fear of waking her mother. For a moment you’re disorientated. What’s this? Who is this? The curtains are heavy, dark, totally opaque. Your eyes don’t adjust. You feel her hair on your face. For seconds you are unsure – is this some bedroom farce where the girl visits the wrong room? No – and you feel the shock of it again – she is going out with me. She bends low to kiss you. The smell of her skin is unmistakeable. It has an automatic effect on you. You wonder for a moment if you are subjects in some strange experiment. But then there’s nothing to think about except her lips on yours. You feel the roundness of her nostrils against your face. In your mind’s eyes you are re-constructing this invisible scene. The kiss in the dark. The fatness of her lips, the texture of them registering against yours is synaesthesia. This visit from a succubus.
The next kiss is in a different house. Sophia wedges the book’s spine more firmly into her lap.
They are lying on the carpet. Light streams in aslant through the patio windows. He feels the weight of her, the heat. The beams of the sun make her hair iridescent. The light and warmth excite molecules of perfume, her own smells, the oils in her skin become airborne. He can see capillary veins in her ears. Her clothes are black. Her hair black. He looks up and sees her dark eyes, unreadable against the washed out background of blinding window-light. He breathes her in, feels her pressing him down into the floor. Every part of her penetrating him utterly. She takes part of his lip between her teeth.
Sophia checks her watch, continues. A few pages later, they’re in bed.
It works by touch alone. She’s wearing something rough to the touch, like winceyette. Too scared to open his eyes. There was a wordless invitation. He had been sleeping on the floor beside her; now he’s fully awake in her arms, exploring the way her nightgown opens at the front. The feel of her torso. There’s an impossible trade-off. To be totally present is to risk losing some detail to the oblivion of amnesia. To hover above, observing and recording is to be a tourist in his own life. A man who sees everything through the lens of a camera. Never to experience the fine hairs above her top lip, now slicked with sweat, now kissed smoother still, because too busy recording the experience. His mind slipped away as he gave into the moment and the unreflectiveness of his flesh.
Sophia reads on, about what happens the next day. She looks down self-consciously at the dark hairs long her forearm.
Under the table. What are we doing here? I can smell the grill, days-worth of toast. That window looks down into a yard, across to a magic shop. We’re between the pale wooden legs of the square kitchen table, topped with an orange oilcloth. Sudden urge to kiss took them to the floor. What are we doing here? Like lovers sheltering from an earthquake. Should be in a door jamb. Sheltering from a falling bomb. Like lovers. Sorry. Fudge-mouth. Kissing that sludgy sweetness. Licking the grainy crystals off her teeth. Soft chewed bits down round her gums rooted out with my tongue. Take it down into my mouth. Sticky sweet lips her hair gets in her mouth gummed up with sugary saliva and fudge juice.
Time has passed, Eddie is blowing a small bubble in his spit. He stirs slightly, still asleep. Sophia looks around, feeling somehow guilty. Reading is a guilty pleasure in which she retreats from the world into silent communion. Dave makes her feel guilty about reading – always wanting to watch comedy DVDs that are never funny after the first time. Inside the book there’s a sticker explaining how bookcrossing works. “Take me,” adds a handwritten note. Sophia slips the colourful slip of paper she first noticed inside the book to mark her place and slides the book back into its ziplock bag. She pops the whole package between some folds in her buggy’s hood and moves off.
Sophia turns the buggy back up the slope towards home. She feels her leg muscles working against the gradient, slight dampness in the small of her back. She notices the light scintillating a loose strand of hair. She sweeps it back over her ear and leans into the steepness. Dave doesn’t like to kiss.
Sophia feeds Eddie and puts him on the floor with some toys. She puts the TV on, the familiar chatter of Cbeebies presenters saying that Balamory is coming on next. At the computer she finds the website mentioned inside her book ands registers that she has found it. There’s an option to leave some feedback. Without pausing to consider where this chain of actions might lead, Sophia composes a response. “I have just found this book. I had never heard of it. It’s good; I like it.” Only after submitting the form does Sophia remember the man - a man running who left the book carefully sealed in a zip-lock bag to protect it from the elements until its random recipient might find it. She smiles then, to think about a man leaving a book about kissing for a stranger to find. She’s got ironing to do, she notices. Before starting she puts the book in her shopping bag, folds the buggy up neatly.
The air is damp and you can smell plants. No idea what their names are. Dave sets off for work at 7. He has a long drive to work, in Halifax. We could move closer, but you’ve always liked it here. The schools are better here. It hasn’t rained but the pavements are a dark shade of wet tarmac. The rhythm of the buggy is soothing to mother and child. Is it the same Mclaren who make Formula One cars?
Ahead of her an old couple are walking along. They wear the brown and beige waterproof coats of the old. Where do they get them from? Never seen them in a shop. Probably years old from C&A, BHS, other long-defunct department stores. He’s walking is irregular. One leg seems stiff and he’s dragging that foot through the arc of his stride, effortfully. The woman links arms with him. Her hair is thin, curly and grey. They are here every day. They carry food for the wild birds and from time to time they stop and scatter some, like a story-book farmer broadcasting seed. Or that parable. Some falls on stony ground. Some dies. They do this every day. Faithful to the birds, linking arms as she supports him on this walk which must be really good for his mobility. Wonder what’s wrong with him. Is it a false leg? He can’t be old enough to have been in the war, can he. Old men always make her sad. Sometimes seeing them alone, in their formal dress as they walk up to the chemist – wearing a suit and tie to do the shopping – makes her cry.
They stop at a railing next to the water and feed ducks bread. She overtakes them, peering into the large cuboid plasticised canvas bag the woman carries. In it are a couple of fat-balls. She’s seen the woman tying them on to trees. Fat balls for the wild birds in the park. Raided by squirrels too.
She glances over at the swings as if looking into her future. There’s one child there already with a parent who, like her, has abandoned the house early this morning. The woman stands near the climbing frame spotting the child as it scales some netting.
She’s moving down the slope now. Letting the steepness take control of her, her feet slapping down harder now. The slope makes it easy to peer down at Edward who’s soothed by the motion of the buggy and is peaceful. Someone is running along the road at the bottom of the valley. A woman alone, wearing headphones – an I-pod in one of those trendy arm things. There’s a bench down here where she usually sits down. Should bring a flask. Should bring my MP3 player. Why don’t I remember. Dave’s put some new music on it. He takes a can of lager out with him, putting it in the baby-bottle holder as he goes up-hill, steering with one had and drinking as he goes along the flat. Probably get arrested: drunk in charge. Half the town is a no-drinking zone anyway. But you can’t tell him anything, of course. Another runner passes the woman from the other direction. They nod at each other, the courtesy of people with a shared passion. A random connection. The man stops near to her bench and puts something down. Doesn’t look like litter. How strange! Wonder what it is?
Sophia rounds onto the flat just as the runner crosses the path she’s come down. She looks down at the palms of her hands. Someone told her once that that blotchiness means that you are exercising well, extremities well oxygenated or something. All this walking: it’s good. Must weigh myself. Should give Trace a ring. Wonder if she still goes to the gym. They have a crèche, don’t they? Or a swim would be nice. Just once a week, perhaps. It’s nice, doing this route. You notice things: the changes in the weather, the way the air tastes in different months. How the trees grow.
On the bench is a ziplock bag. There’s a book inside. This is strange.
Inside the back, outside the book is a brightly coloured slip of paper. On in is printed the legend “Book-crossers Scatter Sunshine”. The letters have been shaded across in a sort of rainbow of pencil-crayon. It looks childlike. Sophia parks the buggy, puts the brake on and sits down. Eddie is asleep. She opens the bag. Sophia’s hair is a rich dark brown, curving into her jaw, shelving up towards that pointy bit at the back of her head. Dave likes this style of bob: it accentuates her nape. Sophia allows herself to enjoy the sound of the word “nape” with her mind’s ear.
No-one is watching her. The bookcrosser ran past after leaving the bag here. Sophia opens the bag and takes the book out. It’s a funny-looking book. Not like a real book. It seems a bit home-made. The cover is un-illustrated and there’s no blurb. The title of the book is “Read Me” - like a magic object in Alice in Wonderland. Sophia wonders what transformation will occur if she obeys the book’s imperative.
Are you reading me? Before radio, before telephones, there was this low-tech telepathy. I write and you read my mind. In return I have a glimpse of the thoughts in your mind – mostly guess-work but there’s some hope I’ll be right about how you’ll react to my words. I might have written in another language. I might be dead, but in this encounter we are intimates.
Sophia reads. In the morning sunshine, her hair is shiny. She crosses her feet at the ankles and reaches out with one hand to rock the buggy gently, but Eddie is out like a light. The light is dappled by its path through the leaves of the tree near which the bench is sited. Sophia’s mouth is slightly open and the tip of he tongue rests lightly behind her top front teeth. Now she draws her hand back from the buggy and her shoulders relax as she takes a deeper breath and settles herself on the bench. Now the book is resting on her lap, cradled comfortably in both hands and she gives herself up to it.
In the story, a boy and a girl are flirting.
I don’t know why we are doing this. No actual kissing. She moves her lips over mine, touching but not softening or opening into a kiss. This is torture. But we’re not ready yet. I smell her skin. Warm clothes on a cold day. Autumn; she smells like September afternoons. Gold, cold, clean days, walking out into fallen leaves.
Sophia notices the wide spread of the book, her thumbs on the margins. Sophia allows herself to feel the excitement of a first kiss. On page 7, the two characters are kissing goodnight.
She’s wearing a red dress. They’re on the drive of a house. It’s not her parents’ place – she’s a lodger here. It’s a hot summer evening. The fact that they have been for a meal in a restaurant, that they are saying goodnight on a doorstep, all this makes this moment suddenly significant.
Sophia imagines the scene, which could so easily have been from her own life, years ago. The thrill of a kiss when a kiss is as far as things are going, for now.
She likes to kiss in pubs. It’s quite early and we meet in a pub in town. I buy pints of dark beer. She leans across and kisses me hard on the mouth. I close my eyes, because I am self-conscious. Now the bitter is staring to work and I don’t care. It’s wonderful. I really don’t care who sees. I can smell her foundation , tiny particles dislodged by the friction of this kiss. I sniff it in. This is her smell: a mixture of he body’s signature and the make-up she uses. It’s unique. I’d know her in seconds anywhere. When I think of her it’s in the act of kissing blindly in public.
Sophia moves her left thumb into the centre of the book, pinching the spine so the book stayed open. She touches her mouth. She’s thinking about kissing for the first time in years. In the story the boy is staying the night at his girlfriend’s house for the first time.
Her mother doesn’t allow boys in her room, so you sleep on the sofa. It’s hard to get to sleep. It’s a strange room. The smells of her mother’s cooking, her scent and the cleaning products she uses. Like a patina left on the surface of everything – the deposit left by their lives on the fabric of the rooms. But in the night she comes to you. It’s dark, so dark in the living room. You can’t say anything, for fear of waking her mother. For a moment you’re disorientated. What’s this? Who is this? The curtains are heavy, dark, totally opaque. Your eyes don’t adjust. You feel her hair on your face. For seconds you are unsure – is this some bedroom farce where the girl visits the wrong room? No – and you feel the shock of it again – she is going out with me. She bends low to kiss you. The smell of her skin is unmistakeable. It has an automatic effect on you. You wonder for a moment if you are subjects in some strange experiment. But then there’s nothing to think about except her lips on yours. You feel the roundness of her nostrils against your face. In your mind’s eyes you are re-constructing this invisible scene. The kiss in the dark. The fatness of her lips, the texture of them registering against yours is synaesthesia. This visit from a succubus.
The next kiss is in a different house. Sophia wedges the book’s spine more firmly into her lap.
They are lying on the carpet. Light streams in aslant through the patio windows. He feels the weight of her, the heat. The beams of the sun make her hair iridescent. The light and warmth excite molecules of perfume, her own smells, the oils in her skin become airborne. He can see capillary veins in her ears. Her clothes are black. Her hair black. He looks up and sees her dark eyes, unreadable against the washed out background of blinding window-light. He breathes her in, feels her pressing him down into the floor. Every part of her penetrating him utterly. She takes part of his lip between her teeth.
Sophia checks her watch, continues. A few pages later, they’re in bed.
It works by touch alone. She’s wearing something rough to the touch, like winceyette. Too scared to open his eyes. There was a wordless invitation. He had been sleeping on the floor beside her; now he’s fully awake in her arms, exploring the way her nightgown opens at the front. The feel of her torso. There’s an impossible trade-off. To be totally present is to risk losing some detail to the oblivion of amnesia. To hover above, observing and recording is to be a tourist in his own life. A man who sees everything through the lens of a camera. Never to experience the fine hairs above her top lip, now slicked with sweat, now kissed smoother still, because too busy recording the experience. His mind slipped away as he gave into the moment and the unreflectiveness of his flesh.
Sophia reads on, about what happens the next day. She looks down self-consciously at the dark hairs long her forearm.
Under the table. What are we doing here? I can smell the grill, days-worth of toast. That window looks down into a yard, across to a magic shop. We’re between the pale wooden legs of the square kitchen table, topped with an orange oilcloth. Sudden urge to kiss took them to the floor. What are we doing here? Like lovers sheltering from an earthquake. Should be in a door jamb. Sheltering from a falling bomb. Like lovers. Sorry. Fudge-mouth. Kissing that sludgy sweetness. Licking the grainy crystals off her teeth. Soft chewed bits down round her gums rooted out with my tongue. Take it down into my mouth. Sticky sweet lips her hair gets in her mouth gummed up with sugary saliva and fudge juice.
Time has passed, Eddie is blowing a small bubble in his spit. He stirs slightly, still asleep. Sophia looks around, feeling somehow guilty. Reading is a guilty pleasure in which she retreats from the world into silent communion. Dave makes her feel guilty about reading – always wanting to watch comedy DVDs that are never funny after the first time. Inside the book there’s a sticker explaining how bookcrossing works. “Take me,” adds a handwritten note. Sophia slips the colourful slip of paper she first noticed inside the book to mark her place and slides the book back into its ziplock bag. She pops the whole package between some folds in her buggy’s hood and moves off.
Sophia turns the buggy back up the slope towards home. She feels her leg muscles working against the gradient, slight dampness in the small of her back. She notices the light scintillating a loose strand of hair. She sweeps it back over her ear and leans into the steepness. Dave doesn’t like to kiss.
Sophia feeds Eddie and puts him on the floor with some toys. She puts the TV on, the familiar chatter of Cbeebies presenters saying that Balamory is coming on next. At the computer she finds the website mentioned inside her book ands registers that she has found it. There’s an option to leave some feedback. Without pausing to consider where this chain of actions might lead, Sophia composes a response. “I have just found this book. I had never heard of it. It’s good; I like it.” Only after submitting the form does Sophia remember the man - a man running who left the book carefully sealed in a zip-lock bag to protect it from the elements until its random recipient might find it. She smiles then, to think about a man leaving a book about kissing for a stranger to find. She’s got ironing to do, she notices. Before starting she puts the book in her shopping bag, folds the buggy up neatly.
Saturday 24 February 2007
White Muslim
I’m looking down at the pavement, thinking about the permanence of the crap that gets left there. Persistent. A pile of vomit takes days to wash away, longer if it doesn’t rain much. On your way out to the villages, dead badgers on the side of the road. Moles. I saw a mole by the canal. It was there for several days. You think of the natural processes of decay. Ants carrying bits away, birds coming to pick up dead flesh. But then there’s a dummy in the gutter for weeks on end. No-one’s going to pick it up, I suppose. A tray of chips. Dog dirt. Piles of it by a lamp-post. That bit’s been there ages. It’s sort of sculpted by the rain, smooth, with run-offs and curves. It’ll be washed way eventually. Or maybe Ben from next door will come out. He’ll use a couple of plastic bags and move the thing. Pop it in his wheely bin one Friday morning. That’s that then.
I saw a blackbird get run over. It’s the sort of thing you almost never see. Just in front of the Spar near my house. Birds are always swooping out in front of cars. They’re so fast – it’s as if they fly under the car, into that dark space between the two front wheels. When you’re driving, you go quiet, angle your good ear down to make sure you didn’t kill it. No thud, quick check in the mirrors, no – it’s okay. This one didn’t make it. The car was one of those big things. The driver a long way up, away from the road. The thing played out in slo-mo for me as I walked up to get some chocolate. The wheel caught the bird’s wing. I saw a split-second of terror in the bird’s eyes. This time the he’d lost the game. When I was at school we called it chicken. Someone threw your school-bag into the dual carriage way and you had to run across and rescue it. Other people used to cut themselves. Now you’d call that self-harm, a cutting-club. The wheel drove along his wing, pulling him into the road. The twin black surfaces of tyre and tarmac looked like a deadly mangle, a black milling machine. For a moment it was cartoon-like. Your body is infinitely malleable; if you get squished, it’s like a balloon getting the air squeezed out and in fact you re-inflate automatically. So the bird gets pulled in to that impossibly narrow space. Watching it I can feel the role of friction in the accident. The grating feel of the black road-top. I think of the smell of driven-on tyres, the warm stickiness that helps them to adhere to the road. The bird has no chance. Air gets squeezed out, but also blood, bits of intestine. I hear the crack of tiny hollow bones. The bird does not make any vocalisations. No-one else has noticed. I go into the Spar and but my chocolate. On my way out I notice the flattened creature. It’s like a relief map of a “Blackbird Island” in a pirate story. I step over the oozing shape and go home. Watch what happens. Count the number of cars that run the thing over now it’s stuck to the road. The first few must wonder what’s happening as the irregularity in the surface is transmitted to their wrists through the judder of the steering wheel. In the night it rains, washing away part of the bird remains. The sun comes up and dries out what’s left. The tyres roll on, flattening the corpse out like a macabre ginger-bread bird in a hellish automated kitchen of death.
While shaving, I decide to go up for another look. Take the razor and shave the skin. Why do I associate hair with dirt? The hair that passes from inside the body, where everything is controlled – my processes in command – to outside. Vulnerable to all kinds of attack. The hair like a fire-fighter’s pole down which the swat teams of viruses and germs gleefully slide. Shave it off. This is a cleansing. I don’t normally come up to the shop in the morning, for some reason I decide that I need a paper this morning. When I walk up to the Spar, I look closely at the thing no-one else seems to notice. The beak is still clearly discernable: a yellow triangle amidst the silhouette of death. And it becomes my own meditation on death. A memento mori. Remember to die. As if we might forget to do that! The only action we are guaranteed to perform. A pet cat. A badger pulled to the side of the road by a concerned pedestrian (we are almost all both drivers and pedestrians, although we react in extremely partisan ways - when on foot we curse motorists who do not indicate, when driving we vilify walkers who don’t look both ways), who perhaps makes a mental note to call the council, but almost certainly doesn’t bother. A vole on a country lane.
I was staying with a friend once and we heard a sound behind her chimney. It was a trapped bird. Her mum told me this story: how they’d once had to have the fireplace ripped out when a bird got trapped there before. She wanted me to try to get the bird out. My friend was getting freaked out, thinking about the bird, stuck in the dark and in distress. There was a square hole round the back of the fireplace. I listened; I heard the scrabbling sound of a terrified bird. I imagined the sharp beak, the scratching claws. I didn’t want to put my hand in to that avian panic room. But two women were watching, depending on me: the man of the house was out. I reached in. I felt about. It was over in seconds. To the trapped creature my pink sausages must have been an ideal target, but she kept still. As I felt around gingerly, she was noting that a huge hand had come in and therefore there was room for a small bird to get out. I felt something. Feathers. I grabbed it; expecting the stab of a beak. I pulled out something strangely hard, and threw it onto the rug in front of the fire with the disgust of having to touch dead things. At the moment I extracted the mummified bird, the live one flew out past me, saw its way clear though open windows and was free. The dried up dead shell must have been blocking her in. Nice.
Dream #4
I am on the underground. I’m standing up. I can feel the clatter and sway of the carriage. I am holding a green plastic bulb attached to the ceiling with one of those thick, flexible things that look like oversize versions of the anti-vandal cables you find in phone-boxes. It fits neatly into my hand and for a moment my heart swells with a feeling of positivity for good design. I give myself to the rhythm. A wave is propagated down through the wire and into my arm. I enjoy the contrast between the intense sensation of my mass (must hold on tight or I’ll fall onto someone) and the relaxed way I give in to the sway of motion. I stay loose and the wave carries down through my body until it’s earthed by the carriage floor. I feel like that dancing when a row of people mime the progress of the music through their bodies like a bank of human oscilloscopes tracking a sine-curve.
Poem on the underground. Something by B. Brecht “Bad Time for Poetry”. I don’t read it. Newspapers. The backs of people’s heads, their bags. Wave motion. The underground can rock you to sleep. Now I am on a beach. Walk towards the surf. Look at that massive hole, it must be six-feet deep, the bottom is dark. When I was a child, my dad used to build a boat. A straight edge for the stern, a sweep round to the point of the bows. Within the outline of the vessel we built deep wells for our feet, left raised parts for the benches. We imagined we were rowing. As the sea came in and the water invaded the dinghy, we played at getting into difficulties, getting rescued. There’s something competitive about everything. My children’s sand boat is better than your stupid castle. Grown men bringing gardening-sized spades onto the beach: so many ways to prove you’re a man. At the sea’s edge, people have formed into rows, standing further and further into the waves. Ankle, calf, thigh, waist deep. Ahead of them, moving through the rows, are people on body-boards. They glide down, threatening to bash our ankles, then they’re off again, jumping over and through the waves. Sunlight scintillates off the sea’s bright surfaces. I bring my attention to my feet: the suck of the tide, excavating hollows around my feet, unsettling me. I give in to it a bit, sway in the surf, like a drunk man on an underground train. But I don’t want to fall so I pick my feet up and place them in a more stable place (which also will shortly be undermined). Wet-suits, sun-suits, bikinis, trunks, people with trousers rolled-up, fully clothed people. It’s as if they didn’t know they were coming here and have just had to get soaked, wearing t-shirts and tracky bottoms. Lots of men with big guts hanging – the sea makes us shameless. The aquatic ape theory. We are all looking out at something. Not the horizon, the shallow curve out of which the waves roll. Our focus is nearer, where the waves pitch up and break. The middle ground between deep sea and the edge where small children jump or flee the sliding sheets of foam-edged water that the tidal motor is driving across the sand. We watch for the rhythm. The inexorable movement of the tide, the thrill of the occasional big wave and the shock when we allow ourselves to be caught off guard. None of us have noticed, but we are moving inland quite fast, following the two steps forward, one step back creep of the waves up the shallow incline of shore. I hear a shout pitched a little more shrill than the usual cries of excitement. The beach-grave has been flooded. A few heads turn. One or two realise there are children trapped in there. A man is on the scene first – the dad? The sides are caving in and it’s hard to find somewhere to stand where you’re close enough to help without speeding up the collapse of the pit. If there was a helicopter here, perhaps they could drop a line down? But there’s no helicopter and the hole is already filling with water and sand. It’s so deep, such an impressive construction. The man lies down, keeping his weight as far from the quick-sand centre as possible. He reaches in, his elbow at a funny angle, muscles in his sun-burnt back bunched tight. He’s fishing, the hand circles and plunges deeper. He’s got one. He pulls out a girl, she looks about five years old. He flips her out and she lies on the beach like a suffocating fish. It’s the opposite, he’s plucked her up into a friendly environment. Now lifeguards are here, wrapping her up and moving her away. The man’s frantic now, digging like a dog, risking getting sucked into the maelstrom. “My son’s in there!” he shouts. At some cosmic distance there’s irony here; he digs and the sand flows back immediately. This precise mix of sea-water makes it unmanageable. It won’t stick, it flows and creates a thick, viscous sludge. The boy’s trapped in a wet cement, a deadly slurry. Wait. Look! One of the life-guards has got him. The man’s body twists with effort, the sun-block stripes on his nose and forehead thrown into sharp relief by the purple straining of his face. He’s lying at a weird angle, trying to pull his catch out of the pit. His colleague grabs his legs and he reaches in deeper with both hands now. Some of the onlookers comment that he must be trying to clear an airway. Like the father he finds that every attempt to clear out obstruction just seems to accelerate a new stream of suspended sand-grains which flow like water and stick like mud. It’s hopeless. We can send people into space, but get trapped in a six-foot pit on a beach against a rising tide and it’s over. The lifeguard’s face has to serve us all as a kind of medical instrument, a replacement for TV and comment. We watch him grimace and imagine the child’s hand clutching. We see panic and imagine the grasp slipping. We see despair and imagine the boy’s fingers limp in the hole. Some of us step back from the scene. We wanted to see a rescue. Somehow the body is pulled out. They try to resuscitate. No good. There’s a point in every scene like this at which the attempt to bring back to life stops being heroic and becomes pathetic. How do they do it in films? Is it the music? In films there’s always one doctor who can’t let go. His colleagues stop the procedure. They adopt a certain tone. They euphemise: “He’s gone.” The mum’s hugging her daughter. The dad’s bereft. He’s stuck, trapped by a thought that’s echoed in the minds of every person here who walked past that hole: he shouldn’t have let them dig so deep. That’s gonna be tough to deal with. Bet their marriage doesn’t last. Death of a child does that.
Back on the underground. That was a dream within a dream. We are in the tube. Piccadilly line. MP3 players and mobile phones texting. No eye-contact. Posters up about abandoned luggage. No different to how it was in the IRA days. Foreigners. They feel the cold in England. Even on a warm day they might be wearing a coat. I carry a rucksack. It contains some lunch, a book, a notebook. The doors open at Earl’s Court. There’s an alert. The police are fanning out across the platform. Uniform officers cradling their guns. Who comes up with those strange ways of holding a weapon? A smaller group of 4 plain-clothes guys. One makes a circle with his index finger, holds up four digits, makes a fist, pulls it down fast: this operation will be signed for the hard of hearing. In your nightmares, you see the suicide bomber open his coat, revealing the belts of explosive. In the films, it’s always a stand-off. The finger on the switch – it’s a dead man’s hand device – shoot me and the thing blows up anyway. No good shooting me in the head, even. People on the platform are uneasy. Some stand stock still. Don’t want to be on tonight’s news. Some are videoing on their phones – just in case it is about to kick off. Want to have some evidence to send into the TV news. Others carry on with their business. Get on to trains, read newspapers. This is ordinary. A man comes into our train. Coat, backpack. He’s white. White muslim? The next suicide bomber should be a white muslim. Imagine the faux-horror of the news media. Has a beard. He’s about 40. He’s okay. Simultaneously one of the plain-clothes guys gets something on his radio. He’s looking around now and spots another man coming into our train. This one’s younger. No rucksack although he looks pretty bulky under an XXXL hoody. He’s got a stereo in. The police yell at him to stop. He ignores it. Can’t hear them. They rush towards us, towards me. He hears something, perhaps “doors closing”. He picks up his pace to get on board though the closing doors. He’s in the train.
The four are in too. One officer circles his whole body without warning, pinning his arms to his sides. He brings his man down. Another plain-clothes guy has his weapon drawn and shoots the man twice in the head. One bullet enters the guy’s eye. A neat burnt circle that starts to well with blood as we look on in horror. More mobile phones are recording the moment. The obscene wound like a cigarette burn to the face. Look at this: the open wound of a killer culture. The panels advertise holidays. People are screaming. The man with the beard stares. Shock stuns the passengers into silence. Some are already sending the footage to sky news. Are terrorists somehow the “less-dead”? Is this man a terrorist. He’s very quiet. I expected a rant, some last words.
“It’s me, you idiots,” I’m shouting. “You shot the wrong man.” I detonate the bomb. I am not a white muslim. This is a private jihad. Hope you got some good shots on your camera phones. It doesn’t matter now who the police shot.
I saw a blackbird get run over. It’s the sort of thing you almost never see. Just in front of the Spar near my house. Birds are always swooping out in front of cars. They’re so fast – it’s as if they fly under the car, into that dark space between the two front wheels. When you’re driving, you go quiet, angle your good ear down to make sure you didn’t kill it. No thud, quick check in the mirrors, no – it’s okay. This one didn’t make it. The car was one of those big things. The driver a long way up, away from the road. The thing played out in slo-mo for me as I walked up to get some chocolate. The wheel caught the bird’s wing. I saw a split-second of terror in the bird’s eyes. This time the he’d lost the game. When I was at school we called it chicken. Someone threw your school-bag into the dual carriage way and you had to run across and rescue it. Other people used to cut themselves. Now you’d call that self-harm, a cutting-club. The wheel drove along his wing, pulling him into the road. The twin black surfaces of tyre and tarmac looked like a deadly mangle, a black milling machine. For a moment it was cartoon-like. Your body is infinitely malleable; if you get squished, it’s like a balloon getting the air squeezed out and in fact you re-inflate automatically. So the bird gets pulled in to that impossibly narrow space. Watching it I can feel the role of friction in the accident. The grating feel of the black road-top. I think of the smell of driven-on tyres, the warm stickiness that helps them to adhere to the road. The bird has no chance. Air gets squeezed out, but also blood, bits of intestine. I hear the crack of tiny hollow bones. The bird does not make any vocalisations. No-one else has noticed. I go into the Spar and but my chocolate. On my way out I notice the flattened creature. It’s like a relief map of a “Blackbird Island” in a pirate story. I step over the oozing shape and go home. Watch what happens. Count the number of cars that run the thing over now it’s stuck to the road. The first few must wonder what’s happening as the irregularity in the surface is transmitted to their wrists through the judder of the steering wheel. In the night it rains, washing away part of the bird remains. The sun comes up and dries out what’s left. The tyres roll on, flattening the corpse out like a macabre ginger-bread bird in a hellish automated kitchen of death.
While shaving, I decide to go up for another look. Take the razor and shave the skin. Why do I associate hair with dirt? The hair that passes from inside the body, where everything is controlled – my processes in command – to outside. Vulnerable to all kinds of attack. The hair like a fire-fighter’s pole down which the swat teams of viruses and germs gleefully slide. Shave it off. This is a cleansing. I don’t normally come up to the shop in the morning, for some reason I decide that I need a paper this morning. When I walk up to the Spar, I look closely at the thing no-one else seems to notice. The beak is still clearly discernable: a yellow triangle amidst the silhouette of death. And it becomes my own meditation on death. A memento mori. Remember to die. As if we might forget to do that! The only action we are guaranteed to perform. A pet cat. A badger pulled to the side of the road by a concerned pedestrian (we are almost all both drivers and pedestrians, although we react in extremely partisan ways - when on foot we curse motorists who do not indicate, when driving we vilify walkers who don’t look both ways), who perhaps makes a mental note to call the council, but almost certainly doesn’t bother. A vole on a country lane.
I was staying with a friend once and we heard a sound behind her chimney. It was a trapped bird. Her mum told me this story: how they’d once had to have the fireplace ripped out when a bird got trapped there before. She wanted me to try to get the bird out. My friend was getting freaked out, thinking about the bird, stuck in the dark and in distress. There was a square hole round the back of the fireplace. I listened; I heard the scrabbling sound of a terrified bird. I imagined the sharp beak, the scratching claws. I didn’t want to put my hand in to that avian panic room. But two women were watching, depending on me: the man of the house was out. I reached in. I felt about. It was over in seconds. To the trapped creature my pink sausages must have been an ideal target, but she kept still. As I felt around gingerly, she was noting that a huge hand had come in and therefore there was room for a small bird to get out. I felt something. Feathers. I grabbed it; expecting the stab of a beak. I pulled out something strangely hard, and threw it onto the rug in front of the fire with the disgust of having to touch dead things. At the moment I extracted the mummified bird, the live one flew out past me, saw its way clear though open windows and was free. The dried up dead shell must have been blocking her in. Nice.
Dream #4
I am on the underground. I’m standing up. I can feel the clatter and sway of the carriage. I am holding a green plastic bulb attached to the ceiling with one of those thick, flexible things that look like oversize versions of the anti-vandal cables you find in phone-boxes. It fits neatly into my hand and for a moment my heart swells with a feeling of positivity for good design. I give myself to the rhythm. A wave is propagated down through the wire and into my arm. I enjoy the contrast between the intense sensation of my mass (must hold on tight or I’ll fall onto someone) and the relaxed way I give in to the sway of motion. I stay loose and the wave carries down through my body until it’s earthed by the carriage floor. I feel like that dancing when a row of people mime the progress of the music through their bodies like a bank of human oscilloscopes tracking a sine-curve.
Poem on the underground. Something by B. Brecht “Bad Time for Poetry”. I don’t read it. Newspapers. The backs of people’s heads, their bags. Wave motion. The underground can rock you to sleep. Now I am on a beach. Walk towards the surf. Look at that massive hole, it must be six-feet deep, the bottom is dark. When I was a child, my dad used to build a boat. A straight edge for the stern, a sweep round to the point of the bows. Within the outline of the vessel we built deep wells for our feet, left raised parts for the benches. We imagined we were rowing. As the sea came in and the water invaded the dinghy, we played at getting into difficulties, getting rescued. There’s something competitive about everything. My children’s sand boat is better than your stupid castle. Grown men bringing gardening-sized spades onto the beach: so many ways to prove you’re a man. At the sea’s edge, people have formed into rows, standing further and further into the waves. Ankle, calf, thigh, waist deep. Ahead of them, moving through the rows, are people on body-boards. They glide down, threatening to bash our ankles, then they’re off again, jumping over and through the waves. Sunlight scintillates off the sea’s bright surfaces. I bring my attention to my feet: the suck of the tide, excavating hollows around my feet, unsettling me. I give in to it a bit, sway in the surf, like a drunk man on an underground train. But I don’t want to fall so I pick my feet up and place them in a more stable place (which also will shortly be undermined). Wet-suits, sun-suits, bikinis, trunks, people with trousers rolled-up, fully clothed people. It’s as if they didn’t know they were coming here and have just had to get soaked, wearing t-shirts and tracky bottoms. Lots of men with big guts hanging – the sea makes us shameless. The aquatic ape theory. We are all looking out at something. Not the horizon, the shallow curve out of which the waves roll. Our focus is nearer, where the waves pitch up and break. The middle ground between deep sea and the edge where small children jump or flee the sliding sheets of foam-edged water that the tidal motor is driving across the sand. We watch for the rhythm. The inexorable movement of the tide, the thrill of the occasional big wave and the shock when we allow ourselves to be caught off guard. None of us have noticed, but we are moving inland quite fast, following the two steps forward, one step back creep of the waves up the shallow incline of shore. I hear a shout pitched a little more shrill than the usual cries of excitement. The beach-grave has been flooded. A few heads turn. One or two realise there are children trapped in there. A man is on the scene first – the dad? The sides are caving in and it’s hard to find somewhere to stand where you’re close enough to help without speeding up the collapse of the pit. If there was a helicopter here, perhaps they could drop a line down? But there’s no helicopter and the hole is already filling with water and sand. It’s so deep, such an impressive construction. The man lies down, keeping his weight as far from the quick-sand centre as possible. He reaches in, his elbow at a funny angle, muscles in his sun-burnt back bunched tight. He’s fishing, the hand circles and plunges deeper. He’s got one. He pulls out a girl, she looks about five years old. He flips her out and she lies on the beach like a suffocating fish. It’s the opposite, he’s plucked her up into a friendly environment. Now lifeguards are here, wrapping her up and moving her away. The man’s frantic now, digging like a dog, risking getting sucked into the maelstrom. “My son’s in there!” he shouts. At some cosmic distance there’s irony here; he digs and the sand flows back immediately. This precise mix of sea-water makes it unmanageable. It won’t stick, it flows and creates a thick, viscous sludge. The boy’s trapped in a wet cement, a deadly slurry. Wait. Look! One of the life-guards has got him. The man’s body twists with effort, the sun-block stripes on his nose and forehead thrown into sharp relief by the purple straining of his face. He’s lying at a weird angle, trying to pull his catch out of the pit. His colleague grabs his legs and he reaches in deeper with both hands now. Some of the onlookers comment that he must be trying to clear an airway. Like the father he finds that every attempt to clear out obstruction just seems to accelerate a new stream of suspended sand-grains which flow like water and stick like mud. It’s hopeless. We can send people into space, but get trapped in a six-foot pit on a beach against a rising tide and it’s over. The lifeguard’s face has to serve us all as a kind of medical instrument, a replacement for TV and comment. We watch him grimace and imagine the child’s hand clutching. We see panic and imagine the grasp slipping. We see despair and imagine the boy’s fingers limp in the hole. Some of us step back from the scene. We wanted to see a rescue. Somehow the body is pulled out. They try to resuscitate. No good. There’s a point in every scene like this at which the attempt to bring back to life stops being heroic and becomes pathetic. How do they do it in films? Is it the music? In films there’s always one doctor who can’t let go. His colleagues stop the procedure. They adopt a certain tone. They euphemise: “He’s gone.” The mum’s hugging her daughter. The dad’s bereft. He’s stuck, trapped by a thought that’s echoed in the minds of every person here who walked past that hole: he shouldn’t have let them dig so deep. That’s gonna be tough to deal with. Bet their marriage doesn’t last. Death of a child does that.
Back on the underground. That was a dream within a dream. We are in the tube. Piccadilly line. MP3 players and mobile phones texting. No eye-contact. Posters up about abandoned luggage. No different to how it was in the IRA days. Foreigners. They feel the cold in England. Even on a warm day they might be wearing a coat. I carry a rucksack. It contains some lunch, a book, a notebook. The doors open at Earl’s Court. There’s an alert. The police are fanning out across the platform. Uniform officers cradling their guns. Who comes up with those strange ways of holding a weapon? A smaller group of 4 plain-clothes guys. One makes a circle with his index finger, holds up four digits, makes a fist, pulls it down fast: this operation will be signed for the hard of hearing. In your nightmares, you see the suicide bomber open his coat, revealing the belts of explosive. In the films, it’s always a stand-off. The finger on the switch – it’s a dead man’s hand device – shoot me and the thing blows up anyway. No good shooting me in the head, even. People on the platform are uneasy. Some stand stock still. Don’t want to be on tonight’s news. Some are videoing on their phones – just in case it is about to kick off. Want to have some evidence to send into the TV news. Others carry on with their business. Get on to trains, read newspapers. This is ordinary. A man comes into our train. Coat, backpack. He’s white. White muslim? The next suicide bomber should be a white muslim. Imagine the faux-horror of the news media. Has a beard. He’s about 40. He’s okay. Simultaneously one of the plain-clothes guys gets something on his radio. He’s looking around now and spots another man coming into our train. This one’s younger. No rucksack although he looks pretty bulky under an XXXL hoody. He’s got a stereo in. The police yell at him to stop. He ignores it. Can’t hear them. They rush towards us, towards me. He hears something, perhaps “doors closing”. He picks up his pace to get on board though the closing doors. He’s in the train.
The four are in too. One officer circles his whole body without warning, pinning his arms to his sides. He brings his man down. Another plain-clothes guy has his weapon drawn and shoots the man twice in the head. One bullet enters the guy’s eye. A neat burnt circle that starts to well with blood as we look on in horror. More mobile phones are recording the moment. The obscene wound like a cigarette burn to the face. Look at this: the open wound of a killer culture. The panels advertise holidays. People are screaming. The man with the beard stares. Shock stuns the passengers into silence. Some are already sending the footage to sky news. Are terrorists somehow the “less-dead”? Is this man a terrorist. He’s very quiet. I expected a rant, some last words.
“It’s me, you idiots,” I’m shouting. “You shot the wrong man.” I detonate the bomb. I am not a white muslim. This is a private jihad. Hope you got some good shots on your camera phones. It doesn’t matter now who the police shot.
Wacky
The play barn provides pleasant piped pop music, instant coffee (with squirty cream and a sprinkle of cocoa if you prefer) and no-added sugar fruit shoots. The equipment is bright plastic-coated padding on a shell of scaffolding. It’s like a monkey-house. The wild animals are inside while we watch from outside the mesh. We’re entranced because they look so almost-human. Some parents are hyper-vigilant, others are no where to be seen. They’ve gone through into the pub.
In the larger of the play areas, there’s an upper level in which you walk across some walkways (rope bridges). It’s precarious, most children take a while to be able to do it. One of the delights of the place is watching a Mum or Dad go in after their child. Oversized, like a fairy-tale giant appearing in my poky terrace house, I like to watch their large bodies twisting though the obstacles. On the walkway today one boy has taken hold of another and is administering a ferocious beating. Both boys are solidly built. The aggressor has his face painted. He’s Dracula. His hairline has been extended with a point on his forehead --- a count Dracula widow’s peak. At the corner of his black lips there are painted on fangs. His face is unnaturally white. There’s glint in his eye and he seems to suit the role – although there’s nothing of the vampire’s seductive charm here. He’s thumping the blond boy. He’s stood still. He attempts to fight back, but he can’t match the aggression of the Count. He pulls away, but those walkways are tricky and the vampire has him fast by the shirt (long-sleeved so you don’t burn your elbows on the slides).
“Leave my friend alone!” shouts an earnest little girl. Parents start to notice.
You are not supposed to bring glasses in to the play barn. It says so quite clearly around the pub. They will give you a plastic glass, if you ask. Do you ever just think: why do I keep it all in? Yes, I know violence is wrong. But this is a violent world, sometimes. Why do I think I am any better than anyone else? In my lazy, liberal and lager-impaired mind there’s a suspicion that actually most arguments are won through decisive action. Often through violence. One child is bashing another. His parents, no doubt, have taught him not to fight. Perhaps that it’s okay to hit in self-defence. That advice looks useless in this situation.
“Leave my child alone!” a mother yells through the nylon mesh. Too difficult to get in there quickly. She want this to stop now. But another mother is belatedly registering what’s happened. She has, of course, been supervising her undead offspring at all times. Although the area is monitored by trained staff. Now she calls to him. Moments earlier she was bouncing a girl on her knee. There seems to be something wrong with her. I’d already noticed this woman. She can’t help looking like that, I know. But her eyes look entirely vacant. And she was bouncing the girl bizarrely – the child’s shirt was almost coming off because of the vigour and abandon of the mother’s movements. Through it all she seemed to be looking out into space. Or is it a challenge to the other parents?
“Mine says to me: ‘Talk to the hand.’ I tell her she’ll get a slap. I’ve stopped in the middle of Tesco, I have. And given her a slap. People looking at me, I say I’ll give you my address if you want to report me. Old people are the worst. I said to one last week, there – you have her!”
Man with closely shaved head, sips lager from a plastic pint glass. Stella. He’s got faun coloured workboots on, not laced up. Tracky bottoms. His eyebrows look too close to his hairline. The collar of his football shirt is sticking up.
“Yeah, we’ve had to stop going. They keep dropping out. I might give Stubbsy a call. He said he was interested. Gary used to bring two, but one of them dropped out. It isn’t worth the bother. I’ve booked the pitch, then they drop out. Dale can’t make it, his missus won’t let him out. Not worth it, is it?”
On the next table there’s a woman with beige trousers down to her lower calf. She’s wearing flip-flops with black canvas straps. She’s eating her daughter’s sweets out of a plastic bag. Looks like woolies pick ‘n mix.
There’s a man with a white shirt tucked in to jeans. Double denim. A brown steel-buckled belt. He has a neat square of moustache. He’s bald and the top of his head is a shiny protuberance – like those ramming dinosaurs. He has the look of an accountant. Name of Steve. Bought his wife and kids out for Sunday lunch.
The next man I see wears a Fred Perry t-shirt. His hair is cropped. The edge of a necklace is visible at his neckline. Bling bling.
Another of the team walk past. She’s thin. Her badge tells me her name is Zoe. She’s not wearing much make-up. Just eye-liner and some foundation to cover her bad skin. A red spot is brewing up beneath her right nostril. She’s got those large incisors that make a mouth look strangely square – always about to break into a grin.
Table fat. Her calves are large and have the look of poultry. Very white, with pin-points of black where the shaved hair is growing back. She likes her food. I’d like to feel those calves. She’s pretty. Pink decorated canvas shoes. Look sort of Chinese. Steve weaves past on his way to the bar. There’s a magnetic repulsion as his arm come close to my ear. This only operates over short distances. You wouldn’t notice it if you saw him across a room. There’s a field around him I can’t bear to enter. Repellent, and no-one knows.
I go and buy a coffee. She talks too much. It isn’t my fault she’s so ugly. Her black t-shirt has the look of something chosen so that it won’t show dirt. She has her upper lip pierced. Anneka. Her hair back in a small pony-tail; it’s one of those messy “unsymmetrical” cuts and she can’t be bothered with it in the day-time. The lengths are blonde to within three inches of her scalp. I go back to my seat with my coffee. Anneka follows me then continues to the back of the room. She chucks a few balls back into the ball pool, collects some empty coffee cups.
The challenge is to walk up a plastic slide in socks. “This is what you have to do,” explains my daughter. “I need to go quicker than faster.” Get your hands on the side – there’s a raised ridge – sweat helps them stick. Now move the feet up against gravity, despite the lack of friction. The motion is like a cat kneading its bed with slow urgency. Or try walking straight up the middle. A girl in peach trousers is doing it this way, putting her hands down each time her feet start to slide. She’s like Sisyphus – she’s both man and stone ball. At a certain point she drops to her knees and slides back – it’s not within her control. The sound of damp palms squealing down plastic. “I can do it, James, I did it.” Combo technique. One hand round the side of the ridge, one to the floor in front.
I begin to notice the children whose parents aren’t in here. From time to time they call out and no-one’s head turns. Their dads are in the pub. God knows where their mums are. There’s a guy over there who doesn’t look right. Did he come in with a child? Would Zoe and Anneka have noticed. I begin a discreet surveillance. He sips lager from a plastic pint-pot. He’s reading the Daily Mail, but he can’t find anything to hold his attention. He flicks through a few pages and then closes the paper. He folds it in half and stretches his legs out. He takes a slow deliberate slurp of beer, as if aware that he is being watched. I look away. My daughter is sitting on the slope between two sections of the play area having an involved conversation with a large vinyl-coated duck. When I look back the man has gone. I try to remember what he looks like, but it’s impossible. Should tell Zoe, or Anneka.
“Daddy, can I have a fruit shoot?”
“Yes, okay. Which flavour would you like?”
“Orange.”
“Right.”
Someone has taken my table by the time Stephanie is sorted with a drink. I stroll towards the back of the room, where a birthday-child throne is looking abandoned in the grotty bit people avoid. I remind Steph she can’t take the drink in, although of course she knows that. At some level I am guilty. Shouldn’t I be taking her to a museum, or teaching her something? But this is what she wanted to do. In three hours I’ll have to take her back home to her Mum. My weekend is almost over. Heartbreaking.
From my left I hear a shout – someone is in distress. I look across to where there is an arrangement of huge cylindrical blocks. You use them to get up into the second level. I can’t see anyone where the voice is coming from.
“Steph, just go in there and see who’s calling.” She hesitates, waving the drink bottle. I take it from her and put it on the floor. Steph ducks through the vinyl-edged archway into the rear of the play area. She pushes the dangling punch-bag-like danglers and looks over to me. I mouth: “Go on,” using a hand signal like a swat-team cop – two quick jabs with my index finger. Now she’s behind the cylinders and I can’t really see what’s happening. I scan round to see if anyone has noticed my covert op. Then she’s running back, smashing into my knees with complete abandon.
“Daddy …”
I wait. It sometimes takes her a minute to articulate things.
“Daddy … a boy is stuck. He said I had to get someone straight now.”
“Right.”
I look around again, but no-one is checking for this boy. It’s a bit like when you see money on the ground. I want to help the kid and I’m secretly sure that this whole episode reflects well on my skills as a parent. But I’ve got to check – is the owner aware that they have put their valuable possession in jeopardy? I’m also paranoid. This one time I picked up a tenner at work, on the car-park. Hardly anyone was in yet and no-one was parked nearby. I pocketed it. But then I was suddenly aware of the CCTV that we had installed. Was this some kind of test? Leave money on the deck and record staff responses. How many would hand it in to reception? Still – must try not to be paranoid.
So, I go in and speak to the kid. He’s snivelling; his face is red and damp with tears. There’s a space created by the way these cylinders are arranged. He must have slipped or climbed down into one of the gaps. Perhaps it was a gag – he was hiding like a trap-door spider, waiting for passing prey. But then he realised he didn’t have the upper-body strength to pull himself out. He’s inarticulate so, after another moment’s hesitation (is it okay to touch this kid I don’t know?) I reach into the hole and scoop him out. He runs off immediately, in search of his parent or just some other scrape to get into? I don’t know.
A scream. At first you ignore this stuff in here: it’s a play area – kids scream. But this dry has the richer tones and power of an adult woman. And she’s not stopping. I look across to the main ball-pit. She’s holding something that she’s clearly just retrieved from the balls. For a moment, the things I’d really not want to step on in there come to mind. A nappy. Also, for some reason, I always worry that rats might get in there – fancy stepping on a dead rat! The thing she is holding up is a shirt. Automatically I scan round for a topless child. No. No-one has lost a shirt. But then I realise why she’s screaming. The thing’s covered with blood.
After that my eyes are glued to her. She throws the shirt down and scoops up her son, who’s also looking for his sock. Luckily he hasn’t found anything yet. Her face hardens into something like control and she tells the children to get out fast, there’s a mess in the ball-pool. Then she’s striding up to Zoe.
“Something’s wrong. I found a shirt covered in blood. You’ll have to …”
But Zoe is already on her way in, having seen the whole thing.
“Yes, thank you. I’ll see to it.”
There’s blood everywhere. She tries to pull the boy out, sticky balls rolling slowly across her clothes, printing a crazy pattern of blood trails. His throat is cut in a jagged tear. He’s limp in her arms. A dead weight. I turn to help and then look down at Steph. She’s wide-eyed, trying to spit out a question. I turn away from the disaster and scoop Steph up, taking her to the other end of the warehouse. It’s chaos. I drop my ticket on the counter and stalk out. Yes the police will want to question me, but not now. I’ve got to get Steph back to her Mum by 8.
In the larger of the play areas, there’s an upper level in which you walk across some walkways (rope bridges). It’s precarious, most children take a while to be able to do it. One of the delights of the place is watching a Mum or Dad go in after their child. Oversized, like a fairy-tale giant appearing in my poky terrace house, I like to watch their large bodies twisting though the obstacles. On the walkway today one boy has taken hold of another and is administering a ferocious beating. Both boys are solidly built. The aggressor has his face painted. He’s Dracula. His hairline has been extended with a point on his forehead --- a count Dracula widow’s peak. At the corner of his black lips there are painted on fangs. His face is unnaturally white. There’s glint in his eye and he seems to suit the role – although there’s nothing of the vampire’s seductive charm here. He’s thumping the blond boy. He’s stood still. He attempts to fight back, but he can’t match the aggression of the Count. He pulls away, but those walkways are tricky and the vampire has him fast by the shirt (long-sleeved so you don’t burn your elbows on the slides).
“Leave my friend alone!” shouts an earnest little girl. Parents start to notice.
You are not supposed to bring glasses in to the play barn. It says so quite clearly around the pub. They will give you a plastic glass, if you ask. Do you ever just think: why do I keep it all in? Yes, I know violence is wrong. But this is a violent world, sometimes. Why do I think I am any better than anyone else? In my lazy, liberal and lager-impaired mind there’s a suspicion that actually most arguments are won through decisive action. Often through violence. One child is bashing another. His parents, no doubt, have taught him not to fight. Perhaps that it’s okay to hit in self-defence. That advice looks useless in this situation.
“Leave my child alone!” a mother yells through the nylon mesh. Too difficult to get in there quickly. She want this to stop now. But another mother is belatedly registering what’s happened. She has, of course, been supervising her undead offspring at all times. Although the area is monitored by trained staff. Now she calls to him. Moments earlier she was bouncing a girl on her knee. There seems to be something wrong with her. I’d already noticed this woman. She can’t help looking like that, I know. But her eyes look entirely vacant. And she was bouncing the girl bizarrely – the child’s shirt was almost coming off because of the vigour and abandon of the mother’s movements. Through it all she seemed to be looking out into space. Or is it a challenge to the other parents?
“Mine says to me: ‘Talk to the hand.’ I tell her she’ll get a slap. I’ve stopped in the middle of Tesco, I have. And given her a slap. People looking at me, I say I’ll give you my address if you want to report me. Old people are the worst. I said to one last week, there – you have her!”
Man with closely shaved head, sips lager from a plastic pint glass. Stella. He’s got faun coloured workboots on, not laced up. Tracky bottoms. His eyebrows look too close to his hairline. The collar of his football shirt is sticking up.
“Yeah, we’ve had to stop going. They keep dropping out. I might give Stubbsy a call. He said he was interested. Gary used to bring two, but one of them dropped out. It isn’t worth the bother. I’ve booked the pitch, then they drop out. Dale can’t make it, his missus won’t let him out. Not worth it, is it?”
On the next table there’s a woman with beige trousers down to her lower calf. She’s wearing flip-flops with black canvas straps. She’s eating her daughter’s sweets out of a plastic bag. Looks like woolies pick ‘n mix.
There’s a man with a white shirt tucked in to jeans. Double denim. A brown steel-buckled belt. He has a neat square of moustache. He’s bald and the top of his head is a shiny protuberance – like those ramming dinosaurs. He has the look of an accountant. Name of Steve. Bought his wife and kids out for Sunday lunch.
The next man I see wears a Fred Perry t-shirt. His hair is cropped. The edge of a necklace is visible at his neckline. Bling bling.
Another of the team walk past. She’s thin. Her badge tells me her name is Zoe. She’s not wearing much make-up. Just eye-liner and some foundation to cover her bad skin. A red spot is brewing up beneath her right nostril. She’s got those large incisors that make a mouth look strangely square – always about to break into a grin.
Table fat. Her calves are large and have the look of poultry. Very white, with pin-points of black where the shaved hair is growing back. She likes her food. I’d like to feel those calves. She’s pretty. Pink decorated canvas shoes. Look sort of Chinese. Steve weaves past on his way to the bar. There’s a magnetic repulsion as his arm come close to my ear. This only operates over short distances. You wouldn’t notice it if you saw him across a room. There’s a field around him I can’t bear to enter. Repellent, and no-one knows.
I go and buy a coffee. She talks too much. It isn’t my fault she’s so ugly. Her black t-shirt has the look of something chosen so that it won’t show dirt. She has her upper lip pierced. Anneka. Her hair back in a small pony-tail; it’s one of those messy “unsymmetrical” cuts and she can’t be bothered with it in the day-time. The lengths are blonde to within three inches of her scalp. I go back to my seat with my coffee. Anneka follows me then continues to the back of the room. She chucks a few balls back into the ball pool, collects some empty coffee cups.
The challenge is to walk up a plastic slide in socks. “This is what you have to do,” explains my daughter. “I need to go quicker than faster.” Get your hands on the side – there’s a raised ridge – sweat helps them stick. Now move the feet up against gravity, despite the lack of friction. The motion is like a cat kneading its bed with slow urgency. Or try walking straight up the middle. A girl in peach trousers is doing it this way, putting her hands down each time her feet start to slide. She’s like Sisyphus – she’s both man and stone ball. At a certain point she drops to her knees and slides back – it’s not within her control. The sound of damp palms squealing down plastic. “I can do it, James, I did it.” Combo technique. One hand round the side of the ridge, one to the floor in front.
I begin to notice the children whose parents aren’t in here. From time to time they call out and no-one’s head turns. Their dads are in the pub. God knows where their mums are. There’s a guy over there who doesn’t look right. Did he come in with a child? Would Zoe and Anneka have noticed. I begin a discreet surveillance. He sips lager from a plastic pint-pot. He’s reading the Daily Mail, but he can’t find anything to hold his attention. He flicks through a few pages and then closes the paper. He folds it in half and stretches his legs out. He takes a slow deliberate slurp of beer, as if aware that he is being watched. I look away. My daughter is sitting on the slope between two sections of the play area having an involved conversation with a large vinyl-coated duck. When I look back the man has gone. I try to remember what he looks like, but it’s impossible. Should tell Zoe, or Anneka.
“Daddy, can I have a fruit shoot?”
“Yes, okay. Which flavour would you like?”
“Orange.”
“Right.”
Someone has taken my table by the time Stephanie is sorted with a drink. I stroll towards the back of the room, where a birthday-child throne is looking abandoned in the grotty bit people avoid. I remind Steph she can’t take the drink in, although of course she knows that. At some level I am guilty. Shouldn’t I be taking her to a museum, or teaching her something? But this is what she wanted to do. In three hours I’ll have to take her back home to her Mum. My weekend is almost over. Heartbreaking.
From my left I hear a shout – someone is in distress. I look across to where there is an arrangement of huge cylindrical blocks. You use them to get up into the second level. I can’t see anyone where the voice is coming from.
“Steph, just go in there and see who’s calling.” She hesitates, waving the drink bottle. I take it from her and put it on the floor. Steph ducks through the vinyl-edged archway into the rear of the play area. She pushes the dangling punch-bag-like danglers and looks over to me. I mouth: “Go on,” using a hand signal like a swat-team cop – two quick jabs with my index finger. Now she’s behind the cylinders and I can’t really see what’s happening. I scan round to see if anyone has noticed my covert op. Then she’s running back, smashing into my knees with complete abandon.
“Daddy …”
I wait. It sometimes takes her a minute to articulate things.
“Daddy … a boy is stuck. He said I had to get someone straight now.”
“Right.”
I look around again, but no-one is checking for this boy. It’s a bit like when you see money on the ground. I want to help the kid and I’m secretly sure that this whole episode reflects well on my skills as a parent. But I’ve got to check – is the owner aware that they have put their valuable possession in jeopardy? I’m also paranoid. This one time I picked up a tenner at work, on the car-park. Hardly anyone was in yet and no-one was parked nearby. I pocketed it. But then I was suddenly aware of the CCTV that we had installed. Was this some kind of test? Leave money on the deck and record staff responses. How many would hand it in to reception? Still – must try not to be paranoid.
So, I go in and speak to the kid. He’s snivelling; his face is red and damp with tears. There’s a space created by the way these cylinders are arranged. He must have slipped or climbed down into one of the gaps. Perhaps it was a gag – he was hiding like a trap-door spider, waiting for passing prey. But then he realised he didn’t have the upper-body strength to pull himself out. He’s inarticulate so, after another moment’s hesitation (is it okay to touch this kid I don’t know?) I reach into the hole and scoop him out. He runs off immediately, in search of his parent or just some other scrape to get into? I don’t know.
A scream. At first you ignore this stuff in here: it’s a play area – kids scream. But this dry has the richer tones and power of an adult woman. And she’s not stopping. I look across to the main ball-pit. She’s holding something that she’s clearly just retrieved from the balls. For a moment, the things I’d really not want to step on in there come to mind. A nappy. Also, for some reason, I always worry that rats might get in there – fancy stepping on a dead rat! The thing she is holding up is a shirt. Automatically I scan round for a topless child. No. No-one has lost a shirt. But then I realise why she’s screaming. The thing’s covered with blood.
After that my eyes are glued to her. She throws the shirt down and scoops up her son, who’s also looking for his sock. Luckily he hasn’t found anything yet. Her face hardens into something like control and she tells the children to get out fast, there’s a mess in the ball-pool. Then she’s striding up to Zoe.
“Something’s wrong. I found a shirt covered in blood. You’ll have to …”
But Zoe is already on her way in, having seen the whole thing.
“Yes, thank you. I’ll see to it.”
There’s blood everywhere. She tries to pull the boy out, sticky balls rolling slowly across her clothes, printing a crazy pattern of blood trails. His throat is cut in a jagged tear. He’s limp in her arms. A dead weight. I turn to help and then look down at Steph. She’s wide-eyed, trying to spit out a question. I turn away from the disaster and scoop Steph up, taking her to the other end of the warehouse. It’s chaos. I drop my ticket on the counter and stalk out. Yes the police will want to question me, but not now. I’ve got to get Steph back to her Mum by 8.
Trinitite/Kryptonite
“What’s that?” Mark looks at Dan’s monitor. His friend is looking at a picture of some green rock.
“Trinitite.”
“What?”
“The heat from the first atomic bomb fused the desert sand. They called this stuff Trinitite. The books describe it as being jade-like. Actually it looks a bit mucky, bubbly like the middle of a mint aero.”
“It looks like Kryptonite.”
“Yeah. This stuff would have been dangerous to anyone, not just Clark Kent.”
“When did they think up Kryptonite?”
“Good question, Superman was first published in 1938. I don’t know when Kryptonite entered the frame.”
Mark does a quick search. “This site says 1943, in the radio series. Weird. Like a prediction.”
“Makes you wonder: life imitating art?”
“Except they’d been making artificial elements since about 1941. Fermi building his chain-reacting piles in squash courts and gymnasia. Transmuting Uranium 238 into Plutonium. Schermerhorn Hall at Columbia. Stagg Field at the University of Chicago.” Mark always excited by pioneers.
“Trinitite isn’t a new element – just a kind of atomic glaze.”
“Yeah, it looks the part though.”
“Plus you find it in the blast-crater of an atomic bomb.”
“It’s all about metamorphosis. We can make new elements. It’s alchemy.”
“Killer bomb-metal. Deadly radioactive rocks.”
“That’s the point. Science is power and danger.”
“Astronauts transformed into the Fantastic Four by cosmic rays, 1961.”
“Bruce Banner transmuted into The Hulk by Gamma radiation, 1962.” This is a conversation in which the web is the third participant.
“As if the human could be modified in the crucible of nuclear fission in the same way that atoms are. A new being with interesting properties. Change, powers. We created Plutonium, thermonuclear physics will make us supermen.”
“Like the cosmic-ray theory of genetic mutation. The mechanism that powers evolution.”
“It makes me think about the military personnel exposed to radiation in the pacific. Those 1950’s pictures of them watching the tests through bits of coloured glass. None of them developed special powers. As if the comics are processing anxieties about it. Yes, it’s dangerous to be exposed to our new bombs, but our magic rays will make us invincible.”
“The comic book plays out the big ideas on the scientist’s own body.”
“Yeah in films they always have to experiment on themselves.”
“It’s the only site at which to work out the promise and curse of science – the only thing we really own.”
“But in the real world they usually do it to soldiers.”
“Trinitite.”
“What?”
“The heat from the first atomic bomb fused the desert sand. They called this stuff Trinitite. The books describe it as being jade-like. Actually it looks a bit mucky, bubbly like the middle of a mint aero.”
“It looks like Kryptonite.”
“Yeah. This stuff would have been dangerous to anyone, not just Clark Kent.”
“When did they think up Kryptonite?”
“Good question, Superman was first published in 1938. I don’t know when Kryptonite entered the frame.”
Mark does a quick search. “This site says 1943, in the radio series. Weird. Like a prediction.”
“Makes you wonder: life imitating art?”
“Except they’d been making artificial elements since about 1941. Fermi building his chain-reacting piles in squash courts and gymnasia. Transmuting Uranium 238 into Plutonium. Schermerhorn Hall at Columbia. Stagg Field at the University of Chicago.” Mark always excited by pioneers.
“Trinitite isn’t a new element – just a kind of atomic glaze.”
“Yeah, it looks the part though.”
“Plus you find it in the blast-crater of an atomic bomb.”
“It’s all about metamorphosis. We can make new elements. It’s alchemy.”
“Killer bomb-metal. Deadly radioactive rocks.”
“That’s the point. Science is power and danger.”
“Astronauts transformed into the Fantastic Four by cosmic rays, 1961.”
“Bruce Banner transmuted into The Hulk by Gamma radiation, 1962.” This is a conversation in which the web is the third participant.
“As if the human could be modified in the crucible of nuclear fission in the same way that atoms are. A new being with interesting properties. Change, powers. We created Plutonium, thermonuclear physics will make us supermen.”
“Like the cosmic-ray theory of genetic mutation. The mechanism that powers evolution.”
“It makes me think about the military personnel exposed to radiation in the pacific. Those 1950’s pictures of them watching the tests through bits of coloured glass. None of them developed special powers. As if the comics are processing anxieties about it. Yes, it’s dangerous to be exposed to our new bombs, but our magic rays will make us invincible.”
“The comic book plays out the big ideas on the scientist’s own body.”
“Yeah in films they always have to experiment on themselves.”
“It’s the only site at which to work out the promise and curse of science – the only thing we really own.”
“But in the real world they usually do it to soldiers.”
Top Trumps
Mark shuffled the cards. They were sitting on red plastic chairs, Dan opposite him across the width of a school table
‘No, he’s not a spree killer. He’s a mass murderer.’
‘What?’
‘In physics, you said Lawrence was a spree killer, but all his victims were killed on the same day. He’s a mass murderer, technically.’
Mark dealt the cards, sharing the whole pack out. He paused to look across to the open door-way. A sixth-former was walking past. She was very thin with dyed black hair. Her back-dimples were clearly defined. She had a ring through her lower lip and a t-shirt which read “Boys lie, poke ‘em in the eye”. As soon as she’d passed, both boys picked up their piles.
‘We can still do him a card, right?’
‘Of course.’
They’d tried to buy serial killer trading cards on e-bay: very expensive. Anyway, it was far more fun to make your own.
“He needs a nick-name.”
What excited them at first was the names: The Green River Killer; Citizen X; The Night Stalker; The Co-ed Killer; Bible John; Charlie Chop-off; The Yorkshire Ripper; The Son of Sam; The Killer Clown; The Zebra Killers; The Monster Butler; The Moors Murderers; The Black Doodler; The Railway Killer; The Southside Slayer; The Die Song (their favourite).
“History Man.”
“The Hammer Horror.”
“Youngest player first: your go, Dan.”
“Victims: 48.”
“Impressive. Who is that – Green River?”
“Yeah, Gary Ridgway.”
“Victims: 38. You get Bundy!”
“Cool.”
Each card was classic top-trumps style. The killer’s eyes stared out from a photo taken from the internet or some true-crime encyclopaedia. Above that were the nick-name and real name of the character. Richard Chase: “The Vampire Killer”. Albert DeSalvo: “The Boston Strangler”. DeSalvo was a classic – he had three names: a.k.a. “The Measuring Man”, a.k.a “The Green Man”. Only lethal as the strangler. Some cards only bore the police/press name: Jack the Ripper; Jack The Stripper; The Zodiac Killer. Never caught, so freeing the theory-makers: serial killer burn-out all they way to Jack as incarnation of ultimate evil. Some of the names they came up with themselves - Aileen Wuornos: “The Weaponised Lesbian”. The cards had a short description of the killers’ careers: the MO; Herbert Mullin inspecting intestines for signs of pollution; Gacy’s clown acts - Pogo and Patches; Bundy’s escapes; when they were executed (if applicable). Serial murder ironies: Edmund Kemper and Peter Woodcock – let loose to kill again; “The Gay Slayer”, Colin Ireland, learning how to be a serial killer from a book.
“We should make some cards for fictional killers,” said Dan.
“Yeah. That would be fun.”
“Harder to get the facts.”
“Have to watch the films again. Hannibal Lecter; Buffalo Bill.”
“Yeah. The fictional ones are even worse than reality: Patrick Bateman; Henry; The Gemini Killer in The Exorcist.”
“Yeh – possessed by the devil. Does that count as a legal defence?”
“More female killers in the fictional sphere.”
“Which is stupid.”
“When you’ve done them we could put the imagined ones up against the real thing.”
“Combine the packs for a mega game of homicidal top-trumps. Like with the Buffy and Angel sets.”
“Okay. I’ll make a start.”
“It’s still your go.”
“Intelligence: 10.”
“Intelligence: 2.”
“I had Shipman.”
“Yeah, you got The Stockwell Strangler: Kenneth Erskine, mental age 11.”
Categories included time on the loose, number of victims, books and films inspired; then the obligatory top-trumps out-of-ten ratings: intelligence; ferocity; insanity. The last three mainly made up by the card-designers. Mary Ann Cotton’s twenty-year career beats Jack the Ripper’s 10 weeks. No-one can touch Shipman on victims. Jeffrey Dahmer trumps Gerald Stano on books. Mullin takes Wuornos on insanity. The Gainsville Ripper aces Yang Xinhai on ferocity. The bell goes and it’s time for lessons. Mark sweeps up the cards and they re-arrange the chairs, get their books out, waiting for the teacher and their class-mates.
‘No, he’s not a spree killer. He’s a mass murderer.’
‘What?’
‘In physics, you said Lawrence was a spree killer, but all his victims were killed on the same day. He’s a mass murderer, technically.’
Mark dealt the cards, sharing the whole pack out. He paused to look across to the open door-way. A sixth-former was walking past. She was very thin with dyed black hair. Her back-dimples were clearly defined. She had a ring through her lower lip and a t-shirt which read “Boys lie, poke ‘em in the eye”. As soon as she’d passed, both boys picked up their piles.
‘We can still do him a card, right?’
‘Of course.’
They’d tried to buy serial killer trading cards on e-bay: very expensive. Anyway, it was far more fun to make your own.
“He needs a nick-name.”
What excited them at first was the names: The Green River Killer; Citizen X; The Night Stalker; The Co-ed Killer; Bible John; Charlie Chop-off; The Yorkshire Ripper; The Son of Sam; The Killer Clown; The Zebra Killers; The Monster Butler; The Moors Murderers; The Black Doodler; The Railway Killer; The Southside Slayer; The Die Song (their favourite).
“History Man.”
“The Hammer Horror.”
“Youngest player first: your go, Dan.”
“Victims: 48.”
“Impressive. Who is that – Green River?”
“Yeah, Gary Ridgway.”
“Victims: 38. You get Bundy!”
“Cool.”
Each card was classic top-trumps style. The killer’s eyes stared out from a photo taken from the internet or some true-crime encyclopaedia. Above that were the nick-name and real name of the character. Richard Chase: “The Vampire Killer”. Albert DeSalvo: “The Boston Strangler”. DeSalvo was a classic – he had three names: a.k.a. “The Measuring Man”, a.k.a “The Green Man”. Only lethal as the strangler. Some cards only bore the police/press name: Jack the Ripper; Jack The Stripper; The Zodiac Killer. Never caught, so freeing the theory-makers: serial killer burn-out all they way to Jack as incarnation of ultimate evil. Some of the names they came up with themselves - Aileen Wuornos: “The Weaponised Lesbian”. The cards had a short description of the killers’ careers: the MO; Herbert Mullin inspecting intestines for signs of pollution; Gacy’s clown acts - Pogo and Patches; Bundy’s escapes; when they were executed (if applicable). Serial murder ironies: Edmund Kemper and Peter Woodcock – let loose to kill again; “The Gay Slayer”, Colin Ireland, learning how to be a serial killer from a book.
“We should make some cards for fictional killers,” said Dan.
“Yeah. That would be fun.”
“Harder to get the facts.”
“Have to watch the films again. Hannibal Lecter; Buffalo Bill.”
“Yeah. The fictional ones are even worse than reality: Patrick Bateman; Henry; The Gemini Killer in The Exorcist.”
“Yeh – possessed by the devil. Does that count as a legal defence?”
“More female killers in the fictional sphere.”
“Which is stupid.”
“When you’ve done them we could put the imagined ones up against the real thing.”
“Combine the packs for a mega game of homicidal top-trumps. Like with the Buffy and Angel sets.”
“Okay. I’ll make a start.”
“It’s still your go.”
“Intelligence: 10.”
“Intelligence: 2.”
“I had Shipman.”
“Yeah, you got The Stockwell Strangler: Kenneth Erskine, mental age 11.”
Categories included time on the loose, number of victims, books and films inspired; then the obligatory top-trumps out-of-ten ratings: intelligence; ferocity; insanity. The last three mainly made up by the card-designers. Mary Ann Cotton’s twenty-year career beats Jack the Ripper’s 10 weeks. No-one can touch Shipman on victims. Jeffrey Dahmer trumps Gerald Stano on books. Mullin takes Wuornos on insanity. The Gainsville Ripper aces Yang Xinhai on ferocity. The bell goes and it’s time for lessons. Mark sweeps up the cards and they re-arrange the chairs, get their books out, waiting for the teacher and their class-mates.
reader’s block
Words fail me. I am suffering from reader’s block. I have just finished The Atrocity Exhibition. I have been reading it for ten days. I have looked up a series of words in the dictionary: hypogeum; nystagmus; blastosphere; caisson. I have notes on the way he uses the word “mimetisized”. I have copied out certain sentences I particularly admire. I am intending to find out more about the artists he mentions, especially Bellmer. I want to visit the reservoirs near Staines.
It’s over. No it’s not you, it’s me. You haven’t done anything, you haven’t changed. I’m finished. I’m finishing you. She’s finished me. Like a holiday romance, the thing had it’s own limit built in. With a book that’s only 184 pages long, you know it’s only going to be a short affair. It’s been exciting. You’ve been the first thing I thought about every day for ten days. You went everywhere with me.
I don’t know. I didn’t really understand him. He was difficult. All that stuff about his wife. We did have a lot in common. The Kennedy thing, atomic weapons, The Manic Street Preachers, David Cronenberg films. I liked being with him. It made me feel important. The sex was only okay.
I’ve felt sick all day; bereft. I can’t be alone. Sometimes I think it would be good for me. Just my own thoughts, my own sentences, my own vocabulary. Impossible. I don’t know what to read next. More Ballard? I’ve reserved Super-Cannes at the library. A yellow postcard will arrive when it comes. Someone in Macclesfield is enjoying it at the moment. I have got other Ballard in the house: Empire of the Sun; Low Flying Aircraft. But I’ve never managed to start them before and now I’m faced with it, nothing’s changed.
Evening comes. I pick up several books. I think about reading some big non-fiction things. I should read some Virginia Woolf someone’s lent me. But I hate to read something I feel I ought to read. I start reading a true-crime book, but I only get as far as the preface (again). How many times do I read these prefaces? I think about digging out some old books from the cupboard under the stairs. In a drawer upstairs I’ve stashed some WW2 escape books that I found in the loft. I want to read that book about the Elephant Man. So many biographies I want to read. Somehow I can’t bear to read another novel straight away. The last three books I read have been novels. I need to read something no-one else I know would read. I’ve got a lot to prove. I’ve got lists. Lists of books I’ve read. Books I plan to read. Books I want to buy. Why do I keep buying books in charity shops? I can buy a book in seconds but it may take me ten days to read it. Why does some trashy thing in the library attract my attention? Why is it difficult to connect with a book that’s been in the house for a while? I haven’t read it yet, what’s changed? What’s changed? Why should I read it now? Am I just in the right mood? I settle on a book on physics I’ve had for years. I start to take notes: “who is the experimenter?”; lexane; the subvisible; “[A]nything can happen once”; “There are maps for every occasion”. Yes. This is me.
I have to tell you that reading for me is delicious interfacing. The dance of alternating yielding and regaining control. The semi-automatic space-ship docking sequences in sci-fi epics. The almost-resisted insertion of the heroin syringe. Direct jacking into the web: Existenz; Neuromancer. It’s a dance in which I give myself helplessly to the slam and shake of the prose pulse. Then claw back consciousness to enjoy a verbal echo, or scribe a line in my notebook. At some point I fall into the book. Richard Rhodes’ The Making of the Atomic Bomb seizes me instantly. Reading has me shivering across that border of total loss of self while a semi-autonomous cortical zone picks up clues on what to read next.
It’s over. No it’s not you, it’s me. You haven’t done anything, you haven’t changed. I’m finished. I’m finishing you. She’s finished me. Like a holiday romance, the thing had it’s own limit built in. With a book that’s only 184 pages long, you know it’s only going to be a short affair. It’s been exciting. You’ve been the first thing I thought about every day for ten days. You went everywhere with me.
I don’t know. I didn’t really understand him. He was difficult. All that stuff about his wife. We did have a lot in common. The Kennedy thing, atomic weapons, The Manic Street Preachers, David Cronenberg films. I liked being with him. It made me feel important. The sex was only okay.
I’ve felt sick all day; bereft. I can’t be alone. Sometimes I think it would be good for me. Just my own thoughts, my own sentences, my own vocabulary. Impossible. I don’t know what to read next. More Ballard? I’ve reserved Super-Cannes at the library. A yellow postcard will arrive when it comes. Someone in Macclesfield is enjoying it at the moment. I have got other Ballard in the house: Empire of the Sun; Low Flying Aircraft. But I’ve never managed to start them before and now I’m faced with it, nothing’s changed.
Evening comes. I pick up several books. I think about reading some big non-fiction things. I should read some Virginia Woolf someone’s lent me. But I hate to read something I feel I ought to read. I start reading a true-crime book, but I only get as far as the preface (again). How many times do I read these prefaces? I think about digging out some old books from the cupboard under the stairs. In a drawer upstairs I’ve stashed some WW2 escape books that I found in the loft. I want to read that book about the Elephant Man. So many biographies I want to read. Somehow I can’t bear to read another novel straight away. The last three books I read have been novels. I need to read something no-one else I know would read. I’ve got a lot to prove. I’ve got lists. Lists of books I’ve read. Books I plan to read. Books I want to buy. Why do I keep buying books in charity shops? I can buy a book in seconds but it may take me ten days to read it. Why does some trashy thing in the library attract my attention? Why is it difficult to connect with a book that’s been in the house for a while? I haven’t read it yet, what’s changed? What’s changed? Why should I read it now? Am I just in the right mood? I settle on a book on physics I’ve had for years. I start to take notes: “who is the experimenter?”; lexane; the subvisible; “[A]nything can happen once”; “There are maps for every occasion”. Yes. This is me.
I have to tell you that reading for me is delicious interfacing. The dance of alternating yielding and regaining control. The semi-automatic space-ship docking sequences in sci-fi epics. The almost-resisted insertion of the heroin syringe. Direct jacking into the web: Existenz; Neuromancer. It’s a dance in which I give myself helplessly to the slam and shake of the prose pulse. Then claw back consciousness to enjoy a verbal echo, or scribe a line in my notebook. At some point I fall into the book. Richard Rhodes’ The Making of the Atomic Bomb seizes me instantly. Reading has me shivering across that border of total loss of self while a semi-autonomous cortical zone picks up clues on what to read next.
Friday 23 February 2007
You have the right
drop down tiny apocalypse
flop down on me someday
none can name the hour
of your coming or of our
erratic lovemaking
subject to sudden coldsnaps
victim of postal mishaps
and leaves perhaps on railway tracks
unintentionally snowfallen kindly
guardian angel I will greet you
and entreat you to abuse
your right to dance
seize the night
surprised by the moonlight’s size
I can forget the colour of my eyes
but not your beauty though it lies
beyond my range of sight
eavesdropping on our silent conversation
someone sighs I think you’re lying
I think you’ll die of lies
you wear a hat that blinds them to you
but threads that seem to bind me
couple me in music tie me to you
we laugh aloud they never will discover
we do not make love to sound but to each other
flop down on me someday
none can name the hour
of your coming or of our
erratic lovemaking
subject to sudden coldsnaps
victim of postal mishaps
and leaves perhaps on railway tracks
unintentionally snowfallen kindly
guardian angel I will greet you
and entreat you to abuse
your right to dance
seize the night
surprised by the moonlight’s size
I can forget the colour of my eyes
but not your beauty though it lies
beyond my range of sight
eavesdropping on our silent conversation
someone sighs I think you’re lying
I think you’ll die of lies
you wear a hat that blinds them to you
but threads that seem to bind me
couple me in music tie me to you
we laugh aloud they never will discover
we do not make love to sound but to each other
Superb Physics
Lawrence’s calutrons, gaseous dif-
fusion, made America a fusion
factory. The piles push out the slugs.
Kistiakowsky cradling high explosive
in his lap. Shaping explosive lenses
with a dentist’s drill.
Symmetrical waves of force squeeze the sphere
plated with nickel and gold; the neutrons
go crazy. The thing bursts.
What’s leashed in me loves that mad unleashing.
The double flash, blasts of heat and hot air.
The bomb was technically sweet, superb
physics. Oppie called that test “Trinity”.
fusion, made America a fusion
factory. The piles push out the slugs.
Kistiakowsky cradling high explosive
in his lap. Shaping explosive lenses
with a dentist’s drill.
Symmetrical waves of force squeeze the sphere
plated with nickel and gold; the neutrons
go crazy. The thing bursts.
What’s leashed in me loves that mad unleashing.
The double flash, blasts of heat and hot air.
The bomb was technically sweet, superb
physics. Oppie called that test “Trinity”.
Up with the Spring
If we dismantle can the wild revive
around us? Cows paddle in this canal
clogged with no cargo now. Foxes crisscross
this ex-train track: rail-less nettle-lined trail,
soot-black from decades of coal-dust and grit.
Muddy trail where mares trot, dogs walk, I run.
Wild riverbank garlic; corianderscent. The weir fizzes the air with freshness.
around us? Cows paddle in this canal
clogged with no cargo now. Foxes crisscross
this ex-train track: rail-less nettle-lined trail,
soot-black from decades of coal-dust and grit.
Muddy trail where mares trot, dogs walk, I run.
Wild riverbank garlic; corianderscent. The weir fizzes the air with freshness.
The Entropy
I’m weak and limited.
To keep sap rising in one weed
I’d drain myself white and dead -
I am prepared to bleed.
I believe in Jesus.
I want to believe.
I want to want to.
Is my love stronger than entropy?
Is love stronger than this decay?
Everything falls apart.
I try to love it back upright
with every beat of my heart.Is this enough or not quite?
To keep sap rising in one weed
I’d drain myself white and dead -
I am prepared to bleed.
I believe in Jesus.
I want to believe.
I want to want to.
Is my love stronger than entropy?
Is love stronger than this decay?
Everything falls apart.
I try to love it back upright
with every beat of my heart.Is this enough or not quite?
A Mystery
The man's random hands gripped the gull. Its heart
Scrabbled at solidifying air;
Wanted, at least, to fly into its death.
Trees have been infected by Mandelbrot.
Unshakeable - with boughs no sins could bow -
That God-like tree now sheds its mystery.
Work consumes the flesh our bodies make from bread.
Everything is transubstantiation.
And every bit of food and drink, He said,
Will be His flesh if we remember Him.
The air thickens around me.
Forgive me for breaking the silence.
My desire is what I do not deserve.
My heart is a bird held in that man’s hand.
Scrabbled at solidifying air;
Wanted, at least, to fly into its death.
Trees have been infected by Mandelbrot.
Unshakeable - with boughs no sins could bow -
That God-like tree now sheds its mystery.
Work consumes the flesh our bodies make from bread.
Everything is transubstantiation.
And every bit of food and drink, He said,
Will be His flesh if we remember Him.
The air thickens around me.
Forgive me for breaking the silence.
My desire is what I do not deserve.
My heart is a bird held in that man’s hand.
Talking with Angels
"If you could sense the longing of the weight for light -
If you could grasp the yearning of the light for weight -
Then you would taste ecstasy."
Talking With Angels
"It is not necessary to believe
The believable," Angels said.
Yoked together, something breathed through us.
Rain veils the house, the house fills with voices.
Sweat and dust on my fingers - cells decay
And fall. With every motion of the breath
The mind reshapes itself. I feel like death
Living with this past dying inside me.
We dance in search of perfect condition,
Bearing witness to the spine-charging thrill
Of every dawn. Overuse makes flesh sulk,
The nerves nag as we explore the present.
Guarded by neither Nazis nor Angels,
Have we come to want to leave the planet?
If you could grasp the yearning of the light for weight -
Then you would taste ecstasy."
Talking With Angels
"It is not necessary to believe
The believable," Angels said.
Yoked together, something breathed through us.
Rain veils the house, the house fills with voices.
Sweat and dust on my fingers - cells decay
And fall. With every motion of the breath
The mind reshapes itself. I feel like death
Living with this past dying inside me.
We dance in search of perfect condition,
Bearing witness to the spine-charging thrill
Of every dawn. Overuse makes flesh sulk,
The nerves nag as we explore the present.
Guarded by neither Nazis nor Angels,
Have we come to want to leave the planet?
The Enemy of Art
i
His skin was coarse and porous from fatigue.
His new poem was perfect, machine-like.
And he saw all his old notebooks empty,
As if the ink had been sucked out of them.
So simple, it was like a play on words.
He turned his hand to fiction, sculpture, paint.
No-one understood why their books went blank,
Or why their art objects disappeared.
Music and dance were challenging for him,
But diligently he destroyed it all.
Of course there was an out-cry; but he worked
With homeless people, visited his friends.
No-one suspected him, and finally
People found better uses for their lives.
ii
‘We found some notes he left about his work:
“This machine destroys art” – the most famous.
He predicted it might turn on artists,
And maybe that explains the suicides …
His art freed us from creativity –
The paradox is now a commonplace.’
The tourists standing in his workshop feel
A delicious sense of his importance.
Recalling artists who were put to death,
They hope that history will not touch them.
Some still yearn to symbolise their unique
Broken hearts – though that’s now impossible.
They leave to visit the simple headstones
Marking places where works of art once stood.
His skin was coarse and porous from fatigue.
His new poem was perfect, machine-like.
And he saw all his old notebooks empty,
As if the ink had been sucked out of them.
So simple, it was like a play on words.
He turned his hand to fiction, sculpture, paint.
No-one understood why their books went blank,
Or why their art objects disappeared.
Music and dance were challenging for him,
But diligently he destroyed it all.
Of course there was an out-cry; but he worked
With homeless people, visited his friends.
No-one suspected him, and finally
People found better uses for their lives.
ii
‘We found some notes he left about his work:
“This machine destroys art” – the most famous.
He predicted it might turn on artists,
And maybe that explains the suicides …
His art freed us from creativity –
The paradox is now a commonplace.’
The tourists standing in his workshop feel
A delicious sense of his importance.
Recalling artists who were put to death,
They hope that history will not touch them.
Some still yearn to symbolise their unique
Broken hearts – though that’s now impossible.
They leave to visit the simple headstones
Marking places where works of art once stood.
war on terror
Mark is just a mark on blank space. Mark is warlike, martian. He’s a book-mark. He notices and notes things. He is a plain or marked card that marks your place. I am a book (already read) that wants to kill you. He’s a joke in a football game when each team has a player with his name: “Mark, mark Mark!” I made him up (or: he created himself). He’s the non-existent “Mark, king of Scotland” in Macbeth. But now I want to let Mark speak for himself.
I was watching the TV with my Dad. The latest episode in the “War on Terror” was on. Or maybe it was a repeat. One of the presidents said it was a crusade. One of the terrorists said it was a jihad. America is a devil; al-Qaeda is a demon.
“We are all terrorists.”
“Eh, what’s that Mark?”
“We’re all terrorists – we’re all terrified of each other, or of ‘the others’.”
“I’m not terrified.”
“You should be. I am here to replace you.”
“What?”
“Well, that’s why people have children isn’t it? To keep the numbers up – to replace themselves. That’s why people are always panicking about the Asians, the Catholics, the Muslims – they are replacing themselves better than “us” – whoever “we” are. But anyway you’ve done your bit – replaced yourself with me – I’ll fill your space up when you die. No-one else can barge in there. Shame you and Mum didn’t manage a girl as well.”
“No, that’s not it. We wanted children because ... well it’s a natural result of our love for each other. And we wanted you – to make us complete as a family.”
“Yes. Okay. But it’s also about conquest. Like Bush on the TV. Let’s spread the American Way of Life across the globe. Those people are stopping the American way from reproducing itself in their country, and they are infecting the rest of the world, endangering his children. That’s how he sees it. Or maybe he really does think of it as a crusade. Perhaps he believes his own spin. Let’s convert them by force. Love our flag or we’ll kill you. Like the other crusaders – it’s okay to kill the infidel as he’ll go to hell anyway; and if you can get the conversion instead – well RESULT!”
“You’ve got to give them some credit. I mean if you really believe that people will go to hell if they don’t get a chance to hear about Christ.”
“You don’t buy that.”
“No – it was wrong. But this is different – they’re threatening our lives!”
“So do traffic accidents, alcohol, bad diet, smoking, the shit way most countries neglect their people’s rights. But we don’t challenge those kinds of threats very aggressively. No - this one suits us because it gives us a chance to demonise someone and to strengthen our belief in ourselves. But who are we kidding. We made the demon, we are the demons. I’m a real terrorist. I hate America. I declare war on the U.S.A. Bring it on, Bush!”
“Steady on!”
“It’s all a load of crap. Our history teacher today was on about it – these medieval knights who thought that they were Christ’s soldiers miles Christi. Christ didn’t want bloody soldiers! It’s the Jedi knights syndrome again.”
“What do you do when faced by evil.”
“I’m not faced by evil, except when I look in the mirror. We are all evil. You can’t shove it out, put it into someone else and then kill it. Apart from anything else, as soon as you kill it you become evil yourself, even if you’d managed to get the stuff out of you in the first place. We’re all responsible, we’re all evil. Perhaps we just have to face that. Yes, I am alive because some Iraqi child is dead. I’m here because you have to die. You can’t put yourself above it. You can’t be a Jedi - we’re all nasty, selfish – dancing on the corpses of our fellow humans.”
“Mark ...”
“Okay, I know ‘steady on, old chap’ – I’m just, I s’pose, letting off some steam.”
“Have you had a rough day at school ...?”
“No – actually it was mint. These Buddhists came in to talk about Milarepa. He did all this sorcery to get revenge on his evil uncle. Funny thing was, when he decided to give it all up and start practising the Dharma, his teacher kept catching him out – he’d ask him to kill some bandits who were hassling the monk or something and he’d do it. Then Marpa – that was his teacher, his lama, this translator guy - would tell him that he wouldn’t teach him anything until he could undo all the bad he’d done with his magic. Told him he didn’t deserve to learn anything when he acted like that, that anyone else would just have killed him for doing something so nasty. It seemed to take him ages to learn that – but it’s so obvious – you can’t pretend to be good and do stuff like that. But maybe you can’t stop doing those things. So we should just not pretend to be good and be done with it.”
I was watching the TV with my Dad. The latest episode in the “War on Terror” was on. Or maybe it was a repeat. One of the presidents said it was a crusade. One of the terrorists said it was a jihad. America is a devil; al-Qaeda is a demon.
“We are all terrorists.”
“Eh, what’s that Mark?”
“We’re all terrorists – we’re all terrified of each other, or of ‘the others’.”
“I’m not terrified.”
“You should be. I am here to replace you.”
“What?”
“Well, that’s why people have children isn’t it? To keep the numbers up – to replace themselves. That’s why people are always panicking about the Asians, the Catholics, the Muslims – they are replacing themselves better than “us” – whoever “we” are. But anyway you’ve done your bit – replaced yourself with me – I’ll fill your space up when you die. No-one else can barge in there. Shame you and Mum didn’t manage a girl as well.”
“No, that’s not it. We wanted children because ... well it’s a natural result of our love for each other. And we wanted you – to make us complete as a family.”
“Yes. Okay. But it’s also about conquest. Like Bush on the TV. Let’s spread the American Way of Life across the globe. Those people are stopping the American way from reproducing itself in their country, and they are infecting the rest of the world, endangering his children. That’s how he sees it. Or maybe he really does think of it as a crusade. Perhaps he believes his own spin. Let’s convert them by force. Love our flag or we’ll kill you. Like the other crusaders – it’s okay to kill the infidel as he’ll go to hell anyway; and if you can get the conversion instead – well RESULT!”
“You’ve got to give them some credit. I mean if you really believe that people will go to hell if they don’t get a chance to hear about Christ.”
“You don’t buy that.”
“No – it was wrong. But this is different – they’re threatening our lives!”
“So do traffic accidents, alcohol, bad diet, smoking, the shit way most countries neglect their people’s rights. But we don’t challenge those kinds of threats very aggressively. No - this one suits us because it gives us a chance to demonise someone and to strengthen our belief in ourselves. But who are we kidding. We made the demon, we are the demons. I’m a real terrorist. I hate America. I declare war on the U.S.A. Bring it on, Bush!”
“Steady on!”
“It’s all a load of crap. Our history teacher today was on about it – these medieval knights who thought that they were Christ’s soldiers miles Christi. Christ didn’t want bloody soldiers! It’s the Jedi knights syndrome again.”
“What do you do when faced by evil.”
“I’m not faced by evil, except when I look in the mirror. We are all evil. You can’t shove it out, put it into someone else and then kill it. Apart from anything else, as soon as you kill it you become evil yourself, even if you’d managed to get the stuff out of you in the first place. We’re all responsible, we’re all evil. Perhaps we just have to face that. Yes, I am alive because some Iraqi child is dead. I’m here because you have to die. You can’t put yourself above it. You can’t be a Jedi - we’re all nasty, selfish – dancing on the corpses of our fellow humans.”
“Mark ...”
“Okay, I know ‘steady on, old chap’ – I’m just, I s’pose, letting off some steam.”
“Have you had a rough day at school ...?”
“No – actually it was mint. These Buddhists came in to talk about Milarepa. He did all this sorcery to get revenge on his evil uncle. Funny thing was, when he decided to give it all up and start practising the Dharma, his teacher kept catching him out – he’d ask him to kill some bandits who were hassling the monk or something and he’d do it. Then Marpa – that was his teacher, his lama, this translator guy - would tell him that he wouldn’t teach him anything until he could undo all the bad he’d done with his magic. Told him he didn’t deserve to learn anything when he acted like that, that anyone else would just have killed him for doing something so nasty. It seemed to take him ages to learn that – but it’s so obvious – you can’t pretend to be good and do stuff like that. But maybe you can’t stop doing those things. So we should just not pretend to be good and be done with it.”
Walk Home
His mother encouraged him to catch the bus home. But on fine Autumn afternoons he enjoyed the long walk. As soon as he was out of school and into the park he felt different. More intelligent, more attractive, more powerful, more ruthless. Held in place by his warm fleece hat were a pair of headphones through which he drank in the nourishment of noise. This music (converted into MP3 from the CD) was more real than school. It put him in touch, on a deeper level, with similar people. Strong people with clear idea and a taste for the extremes.
The band was called Kinesis. The sleeve notes were full of quotes from a man called Ivan Illich – calling into question all sorts of systems, including school. The music was fierce and tight. The singer raged about infringements of liberty over bass-lines that fused the solidity of masonry with a shark’s fluidity of movement. The drumming was both punctuation and demonstration, making the lyrics irrefutable. Within all this, guitar lines flowed like the free movement of thought. Creativity forcing unmapped courses through the three-dimensional complexity of the brain. Pulling preconceptions apart and working things through anew from basic axioms – freedom, integrity, self-expression, compassion.
There were always beggars in the park. One – an old man with a charming air, saluted him and although no sound could penetrate the cocoon that Kinesis has woven around he head, Jason could easily lip-read the familiar refrain:
“Could you spare us a bit of change, lad?”
Jason fumbled in his pocket and stuck a £1 coin that would have been bus-fare into the man’s hand.
“God bless you, sir!”
My compassion is manifested through an intense hatred towards many of my fellow-humans. If the sight of this man’s suffering could move me to tears, it could also spur me to destroy those who cause such suffering, myself for being unable to prevent it, or him for allowing it to continue. When faced with our shortcomings and weaknesses, might it not be better that we all be destroyed. Perhaps another Noah – some saint or the solitary sane man – would rescue enough life to recreate – no, to begin again on higher principles.
Jason was striding out now, taking huge gulps of the sharp evening air which tasted faintly of bonfires. He came down off the park and cut though Woodhouse. A lot of students lived round here. He watched them – shaven headed or decked with multicolour dreadlocks. As he walked past the Primrose he saw a girl whose face sparkled with surgical steel. He smiled without conscious intention. She gave him a withering look that suggested his clothes, the uniform, marked him out as a class-enemy, someone to be hated, or (worse) pitied.
*
At the end of Buslingthorpe Lane, Jason turned left – up towards Chapel Allerton where he lived. Walking up though Scot Hall Road always gave him a little tremor of fear. He quite enjoyed it. He knew his uniform marked him out as well off. Most of the families who lived along here were not. He lengthened his stride as he ascended the hill, watching a guided bus shudder up its concrete trench on his right. He turned and looked down at Leeds on his left. It was a great view.
On the fields by the police station he could see some kids from the Scot Halls, playing some weird version of golf. Jason always found this amusing – that they chose to play such a middle-class game. But they only ever had one club and they just bashed the ball around with no apparent purpose. Jason crossed the road, bringing him nearer to the golfers. They had noticed him, and briefly he imagined them taking the golf clubs to him, battering him with them. However, there was not much chance of that with the huge cop-shop so near by.
Jason avoided eye-contact and carried on walking.
*
Despite walking home, Jason still got there before his mother has returned from work. He went in and put the kettle on. He was hungry so he got some crisps and munched them loudly. He made himself a strong black coffee and went upstairs to his room.
The band was called Kinesis. The sleeve notes were full of quotes from a man called Ivan Illich – calling into question all sorts of systems, including school. The music was fierce and tight. The singer raged about infringements of liberty over bass-lines that fused the solidity of masonry with a shark’s fluidity of movement. The drumming was both punctuation and demonstration, making the lyrics irrefutable. Within all this, guitar lines flowed like the free movement of thought. Creativity forcing unmapped courses through the three-dimensional complexity of the brain. Pulling preconceptions apart and working things through anew from basic axioms – freedom, integrity, self-expression, compassion.
There were always beggars in the park. One – an old man with a charming air, saluted him and although no sound could penetrate the cocoon that Kinesis has woven around he head, Jason could easily lip-read the familiar refrain:
“Could you spare us a bit of change, lad?”
Jason fumbled in his pocket and stuck a £1 coin that would have been bus-fare into the man’s hand.
“God bless you, sir!”
My compassion is manifested through an intense hatred towards many of my fellow-humans. If the sight of this man’s suffering could move me to tears, it could also spur me to destroy those who cause such suffering, myself for being unable to prevent it, or him for allowing it to continue. When faced with our shortcomings and weaknesses, might it not be better that we all be destroyed. Perhaps another Noah – some saint or the solitary sane man – would rescue enough life to recreate – no, to begin again on higher principles.
Jason was striding out now, taking huge gulps of the sharp evening air which tasted faintly of bonfires. He came down off the park and cut though Woodhouse. A lot of students lived round here. He watched them – shaven headed or decked with multicolour dreadlocks. As he walked past the Primrose he saw a girl whose face sparkled with surgical steel. He smiled without conscious intention. She gave him a withering look that suggested his clothes, the uniform, marked him out as a class-enemy, someone to be hated, or (worse) pitied.
*
At the end of Buslingthorpe Lane, Jason turned left – up towards Chapel Allerton where he lived. Walking up though Scot Hall Road always gave him a little tremor of fear. He quite enjoyed it. He knew his uniform marked him out as well off. Most of the families who lived along here were not. He lengthened his stride as he ascended the hill, watching a guided bus shudder up its concrete trench on his right. He turned and looked down at Leeds on his left. It was a great view.
On the fields by the police station he could see some kids from the Scot Halls, playing some weird version of golf. Jason always found this amusing – that they chose to play such a middle-class game. But they only ever had one club and they just bashed the ball around with no apparent purpose. Jason crossed the road, bringing him nearer to the golfers. They had noticed him, and briefly he imagined them taking the golf clubs to him, battering him with them. However, there was not much chance of that with the huge cop-shop so near by.
Jason avoided eye-contact and carried on walking.
*
Despite walking home, Jason still got there before his mother has returned from work. He went in and put the kettle on. He was hungry so he got some crisps and munched them loudly. He made himself a strong black coffee and went upstairs to his room.
worms
Congleton in July means one thing more than anything else for small children. The paddling pool. A blue-painted shallow circle of concrete. Every summer since she could remember, Sarah had taken the girls there. The first couple of times just taking Simone, then struggling with Theresa as a baby while the older girl balanced precariously on the metal hub at the centre of the pool.
Something that she’d always done alone anyway. That was how parenting was. Some stuff seems to belong to one parent. The children pick up on the different styles. How you’ll order a day, the way you’ll play. Geoff used to bundle a child up in his arms and roll her over and over, suspended in mid air. It looked precarious, as if the daughter would slip from his hands. He was never holding on with both hands, one arm supported the child while the other worked the rotation. Squeals of delight; “he rolls her like a poly,” he’d say. All of Geoff’s play seemed to go together with a strange and private naming. Another game: Geoff, ridiculous, crawling up and down the living room making a big cavity under his torso. Simone would crawl under him as he named this game “tummy tunnel, tummy tunnel”. When Simone was too big for this, Theresa took over the game. Something else he used to say “must press on” – a quote from some old film or something. Code for – let’s stop phaffing about and get on with it.
She packed the bag with towels, dry clothes, food, juice, everything she might need. The girls were in the back yard, already in the sand-pit; it was a scorchingly hot day. They’d need more sunblock soon.
Simone and Theresa trotted along to the pool. It was already busy. Many small children. Some with parents guiding them through their first encounter with the rather chilly pleasure of the pool’s water, the jets that arced in from a pipe running round the perimeter. The places where a break in the pipe meant you could wade in without being sprayed. Others were dashing around madly, their parents sunbathing oblivious on the grass banks, or (more likely) not even here. Some sibling “in charge” but actually not really doing much.
A teenager rides into the park on a bike, leaning over crazily to open the gate’s bolt, but (of course) not able to close it behind him. He cycles down the slope and bumps into the water. The wheels skid on the bottom of the pool. Wet, slippery with sun-block that dripped off those small bodies vulnerable to light as well as irresponsible cyclists. She sees herself moving from the bench. A child, much younger than her own reaching for a ball, oblivious to the cyclist wobbling, trying to right himself. Who else is looking after this toddler? She scoops the child up, he’s wearing blue trunks and has beautiful red hair. He’s starting to look quite red – his fair complexion catching the sun too quickly. Sarah’s holding him as the cyclist crashes down at her feet, his stunt misfired. She says nothing. A bothered-looking teenaged girl rushes up,
“Thanks ... er, I was just in the loo. Is he okay? George? I’ve told you to look out for the big boys. Thanks, lady.”
Sarah looks up to the portaloos, as if seeking to verify the girl’s excuse.
“That’s okay. I hope I didn’t scare him. George, is it? Lovely name. I just thought that youth was going to knock him over.”
“Thanks.”
Sarah paused. The water was cool around her toes. She checked for her girls. They were engrossed in some bizarre version of tennis that seemed to involve keeping a ball out of the water, but of course each time it was wetted, the next hit sent spiralling tails of water everywhere. Much excitement and screeching.
Sarah looked down into the water. There, she saw some pale shapes. Impossible to identify, they looked like some kind of noodle. She bent down to investigate. The thing she picked up was a worm. Dead. The colour and life leached out of it. Sarah dropped it quickly. She did not cry out. No reason to scare the children. But as she walked out from the place where she rescued George she could not help noticing the tens of worms that lay, dead and washed out, at every conceivable distance from the pool’s circumference. Try not to give the worms too much credit for feeling. They are simple organisms, not blessed with much ability to plan, hope, persevere in adversity. It was just stupidity that lead them to keep moving forwards, once they had found themselves in this lightly chlorinated water, where there was nothing to eat. But she couldn’t help thinking of this as a nightly ritual. The lost worms finding themselves in the pool, incapable of imagining that this was not just another rain puddle they could crawl through. This wetness would not dry up soon, nor would it yield to dry ground, welcoming soil. Instead they were in a featureless, blue-painted, limitless space. And how ever far the worm managed to crawl, none would find a way out. All would die.
Sarah wept on her bench, fairly unobtrusively. After a certain amount of time she got out some snacks. By some radar which hadn’t picked up her distress, but which was infallible in the case of food, Simone and Theresa came running with that high-stepping action one adopts when aiming for speed through water. Not long after they went home.
Something that she’d always done alone anyway. That was how parenting was. Some stuff seems to belong to one parent. The children pick up on the different styles. How you’ll order a day, the way you’ll play. Geoff used to bundle a child up in his arms and roll her over and over, suspended in mid air. It looked precarious, as if the daughter would slip from his hands. He was never holding on with both hands, one arm supported the child while the other worked the rotation. Squeals of delight; “he rolls her like a poly,” he’d say. All of Geoff’s play seemed to go together with a strange and private naming. Another game: Geoff, ridiculous, crawling up and down the living room making a big cavity under his torso. Simone would crawl under him as he named this game “tummy tunnel, tummy tunnel”. When Simone was too big for this, Theresa took over the game. Something else he used to say “must press on” – a quote from some old film or something. Code for – let’s stop phaffing about and get on with it.
She packed the bag with towels, dry clothes, food, juice, everything she might need. The girls were in the back yard, already in the sand-pit; it was a scorchingly hot day. They’d need more sunblock soon.
Simone and Theresa trotted along to the pool. It was already busy. Many small children. Some with parents guiding them through their first encounter with the rather chilly pleasure of the pool’s water, the jets that arced in from a pipe running round the perimeter. The places where a break in the pipe meant you could wade in without being sprayed. Others were dashing around madly, their parents sunbathing oblivious on the grass banks, or (more likely) not even here. Some sibling “in charge” but actually not really doing much.
A teenager rides into the park on a bike, leaning over crazily to open the gate’s bolt, but (of course) not able to close it behind him. He cycles down the slope and bumps into the water. The wheels skid on the bottom of the pool. Wet, slippery with sun-block that dripped off those small bodies vulnerable to light as well as irresponsible cyclists. She sees herself moving from the bench. A child, much younger than her own reaching for a ball, oblivious to the cyclist wobbling, trying to right himself. Who else is looking after this toddler? She scoops the child up, he’s wearing blue trunks and has beautiful red hair. He’s starting to look quite red – his fair complexion catching the sun too quickly. Sarah’s holding him as the cyclist crashes down at her feet, his stunt misfired. She says nothing. A bothered-looking teenaged girl rushes up,
“Thanks ... er, I was just in the loo. Is he okay? George? I’ve told you to look out for the big boys. Thanks, lady.”
Sarah looks up to the portaloos, as if seeking to verify the girl’s excuse.
“That’s okay. I hope I didn’t scare him. George, is it? Lovely name. I just thought that youth was going to knock him over.”
“Thanks.”
Sarah paused. The water was cool around her toes. She checked for her girls. They were engrossed in some bizarre version of tennis that seemed to involve keeping a ball out of the water, but of course each time it was wetted, the next hit sent spiralling tails of water everywhere. Much excitement and screeching.
Sarah looked down into the water. There, she saw some pale shapes. Impossible to identify, they looked like some kind of noodle. She bent down to investigate. The thing she picked up was a worm. Dead. The colour and life leached out of it. Sarah dropped it quickly. She did not cry out. No reason to scare the children. But as she walked out from the place where she rescued George she could not help noticing the tens of worms that lay, dead and washed out, at every conceivable distance from the pool’s circumference. Try not to give the worms too much credit for feeling. They are simple organisms, not blessed with much ability to plan, hope, persevere in adversity. It was just stupidity that lead them to keep moving forwards, once they had found themselves in this lightly chlorinated water, where there was nothing to eat. But she couldn’t help thinking of this as a nightly ritual. The lost worms finding themselves in the pool, incapable of imagining that this was not just another rain puddle they could crawl through. This wetness would not dry up soon, nor would it yield to dry ground, welcoming soil. Instead they were in a featureless, blue-painted, limitless space. And how ever far the worm managed to crawl, none would find a way out. All would die.
Sarah wept on her bench, fairly unobtrusively. After a certain amount of time she got out some snacks. By some radar which hadn’t picked up her distress, but which was infallible in the case of food, Simone and Theresa came running with that high-stepping action one adopts when aiming for speed through water. Not long after they went home.
Unputdownable
When you begin reading a book, you create a new universe in which that book’s contents are taking place. Starting a new book is always a bit of a wrench. You have to give up a bit of your being to allow that world to come into existence. But it’s worth it (most of us feel that), you get more being back than you put in, if it’s a good book; after all the writer gave hugely of his/her being to create it (you’d think).
This explains things. The pull of a book you’re reading. Especially near the end. You can’t bear to leave that other world unresolved, in tension. You want to give that world the wholeness it deserves by finishing it. Here the metaphysicians of reading differ. Some believe the separate world ceases to exist. It has been completed and returns to the uncreated state from which your energy wrenched it. But surely something so perfect and whole cannot just disappear? It must persist. Freed from the reader’s mind as soon as she moves on to the next book, it moves on in space and time, completely free.
There’s a downside (bound to be, always). Books you don’t finish – they’re limbos. I know this, this isn’t theory – I’ve seen them. Worlds in which characters are endlessly stranded. History books in which events never play out, cannot be made sense of. Those popular science texts in which theories are never induced from the array of evidence. Most poignant are the autobiographies. Impotent copies of their own authors, unable to progress to a point at which they can say yes, it was worth it; whatever happened got me here. Who is to blame? The reader for abandoning them there? Yes, of course. The writer for not having the skill to coerce closure? Equally, yes.
Each world is individual to its reader. Just imagine all those teenage part-readings of Lord of the Rings. Childishly imagined characters (not Tolkein’s fault – just the immaturity of the reader) stranded at The Prancing Pony because the poor child lacked the stamina to continue. There’s hope for them, of course. You come back to the book. Older, wiser – the characters now bear the wisdom of your suffering also. Suddenly, Bilbo’s disappearing act seems more understandable. And as you move through the book your first childish thrill about the magic ring, now shadowed by experience, recolours everything several shades darker. You like Gollum. The novel is finished. Quiescence, peace.
But not everyone is so compassionate. Many cast unfinished books aside, never dreaming of the torment they cause.
I am the cure. Well, not a cure as much as a punishment. Vengeance even. Let me tell you a bit about myself.
The book is dark in colour. On the back cover there’s no blurb. Just one word in quotation marks – “unputdownable”. You can’t see from here where this quotation is from. Watching someone reading it you might toy with some of the following scenarios. One: the reviewer, herself an eminent novelist, unsparingly giving due credit to a rival writer, despite personal animosity. Two: totally out of context – the reviewer actually wrote “no one could say this book was unputdownable” before enumerating a formidable catalogue of errors in research, grammatical infelicities and just plain poor story-telling. Three: a stupid hack who hasn’t even read the thing – paying back a pal in the trade for a particularly fine lunch.
Still, you’re curious. It’s infuriating to not know what it is. So gratifying to see someone reading something one has read oneself. Or perhaps to get a tip on something new and hot – “saw a guy reading this on the train, never heard of it, bought it, read it, absolutely fantastic”. Another possibility (if you like) the superior feeling of watching some imbecile devouring a book you consider “trash”.
Lucky for you he didn’t drop it on the train. But like it says, it’s unputdownable.
He found it in a book-sale. Summer fair, country churchyard. Trestle tables, paperbacks in irresistible profusion. He looked below the tables at more full boxes. A moment of fury – what if there was something in one of those he really wanted? Why aren’t all the books out at once? Why should these ones wait to fill the spaces vacated by the sold? Senseless. He picked the book up and handed it over. The old dear demanded 50p and put it in a nondescript paper bag. His wife muttered something like: “Haven’t you got enough on the go?” She was ignored. He put the book in the back of the car. He hadn’t actually read a line of it yet. But it intrigued him.
The following morning he walked to the station, as normal. Well, not quite. Don’t think he’s walked along reading a book since he was a teenager. He got on to his train, reading, reading. What’s it about? Please don’t disturb, I’m reading.
He lost his job a few days later. The guy isn’t doing any work – every time you come to speak to him he’s reading. He’s reading all through lunch. He’s silent or monosyllabic.
His wife left him shortly after that.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Just let me finish this paragraph.” He doesn’t come to bed. When he does come up, he lies face down, the book on his pillow. He reads, his head nods, he wakes up like that.
“I’m going away for a couple of days, George. Call me when you finish your book.” He doesn’t notice the acid in her voice. He reads on the toilet, always did that anyway. He doesn’t wash – can’t get the book wet. You can read in the bath, but actually washing and drying yourself is impossible. He eats things you can eat with one hand, and prepare without actually putting the book down. He takes his contact lenses out with the book between his knees. He does a surprising number of things with the book tucked under his arm. He realises he doesn’t really need his lenses in anyway. He’s very dirty. He needs some air. He seems to be reading the same page over and over. He’s beginning to experience that strange feeling you can get near the end of a book you love. You actually don’t want to finish it because then you will no longer be living there; breathing the same air as those characters. He’s walking. He walks out under the wheels of a car. He dies quite soon after that. You comfort the driver. Not your fault. I saw it all. He walked straight out in front of you. Didn’t look, head in a book I think! How thoughtless! Lucky it was only him killed. He’s dirty. Look at his clothes! A weirdo. So selfish – you’ll carry this with you always now. Not your fault though. Car damaged much? Where’s that book? I’ll chuck it in the bin. Better not though, in case the police, y’know, need it for evidence.
This explains things. The pull of a book you’re reading. Especially near the end. You can’t bear to leave that other world unresolved, in tension. You want to give that world the wholeness it deserves by finishing it. Here the metaphysicians of reading differ. Some believe the separate world ceases to exist. It has been completed and returns to the uncreated state from which your energy wrenched it. But surely something so perfect and whole cannot just disappear? It must persist. Freed from the reader’s mind as soon as she moves on to the next book, it moves on in space and time, completely free.
There’s a downside (bound to be, always). Books you don’t finish – they’re limbos. I know this, this isn’t theory – I’ve seen them. Worlds in which characters are endlessly stranded. History books in which events never play out, cannot be made sense of. Those popular science texts in which theories are never induced from the array of evidence. Most poignant are the autobiographies. Impotent copies of their own authors, unable to progress to a point at which they can say yes, it was worth it; whatever happened got me here. Who is to blame? The reader for abandoning them there? Yes, of course. The writer for not having the skill to coerce closure? Equally, yes.
Each world is individual to its reader. Just imagine all those teenage part-readings of Lord of the Rings. Childishly imagined characters (not Tolkein’s fault – just the immaturity of the reader) stranded at The Prancing Pony because the poor child lacked the stamina to continue. There’s hope for them, of course. You come back to the book. Older, wiser – the characters now bear the wisdom of your suffering also. Suddenly, Bilbo’s disappearing act seems more understandable. And as you move through the book your first childish thrill about the magic ring, now shadowed by experience, recolours everything several shades darker. You like Gollum. The novel is finished. Quiescence, peace.
But not everyone is so compassionate. Many cast unfinished books aside, never dreaming of the torment they cause.
I am the cure. Well, not a cure as much as a punishment. Vengeance even. Let me tell you a bit about myself.
The book is dark in colour. On the back cover there’s no blurb. Just one word in quotation marks – “unputdownable”. You can’t see from here where this quotation is from. Watching someone reading it you might toy with some of the following scenarios. One: the reviewer, herself an eminent novelist, unsparingly giving due credit to a rival writer, despite personal animosity. Two: totally out of context – the reviewer actually wrote “no one could say this book was unputdownable” before enumerating a formidable catalogue of errors in research, grammatical infelicities and just plain poor story-telling. Three: a stupid hack who hasn’t even read the thing – paying back a pal in the trade for a particularly fine lunch.
Still, you’re curious. It’s infuriating to not know what it is. So gratifying to see someone reading something one has read oneself. Or perhaps to get a tip on something new and hot – “saw a guy reading this on the train, never heard of it, bought it, read it, absolutely fantastic”. Another possibility (if you like) the superior feeling of watching some imbecile devouring a book you consider “trash”.
Lucky for you he didn’t drop it on the train. But like it says, it’s unputdownable.
He found it in a book-sale. Summer fair, country churchyard. Trestle tables, paperbacks in irresistible profusion. He looked below the tables at more full boxes. A moment of fury – what if there was something in one of those he really wanted? Why aren’t all the books out at once? Why should these ones wait to fill the spaces vacated by the sold? Senseless. He picked the book up and handed it over. The old dear demanded 50p and put it in a nondescript paper bag. His wife muttered something like: “Haven’t you got enough on the go?” She was ignored. He put the book in the back of the car. He hadn’t actually read a line of it yet. But it intrigued him.
The following morning he walked to the station, as normal. Well, not quite. Don’t think he’s walked along reading a book since he was a teenager. He got on to his train, reading, reading. What’s it about? Please don’t disturb, I’m reading.
He lost his job a few days later. The guy isn’t doing any work – every time you come to speak to him he’s reading. He’s reading all through lunch. He’s silent or monosyllabic.
His wife left him shortly after that.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Just let me finish this paragraph.” He doesn’t come to bed. When he does come up, he lies face down, the book on his pillow. He reads, his head nods, he wakes up like that.
“I’m going away for a couple of days, George. Call me when you finish your book.” He doesn’t notice the acid in her voice. He reads on the toilet, always did that anyway. He doesn’t wash – can’t get the book wet. You can read in the bath, but actually washing and drying yourself is impossible. He eats things you can eat with one hand, and prepare without actually putting the book down. He takes his contact lenses out with the book between his knees. He does a surprising number of things with the book tucked under his arm. He realises he doesn’t really need his lenses in anyway. He’s very dirty. He needs some air. He seems to be reading the same page over and over. He’s beginning to experience that strange feeling you can get near the end of a book you love. You actually don’t want to finish it because then you will no longer be living there; breathing the same air as those characters. He’s walking. He walks out under the wheels of a car. He dies quite soon after that. You comfort the driver. Not your fault. I saw it all. He walked straight out in front of you. Didn’t look, head in a book I think! How thoughtless! Lucky it was only him killed. He’s dirty. Look at his clothes! A weirdo. So selfish – you’ll carry this with you always now. Not your fault though. Car damaged much? Where’s that book? I’ll chuck it in the bin. Better not though, in case the police, y’know, need it for evidence.
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