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.
Saturday, 24 February 2007
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”.
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