(real actual notes from a piece i’m writing, as they currently appear in the text)
his
[explain]
then in his 9s
4:
how he hates
why he hates
(click through to view layout)
A DREAM: I was in the field behind the house we lived in when I was a child myself, which slopes up to the high dark hedge, before plunging down the riverbank to the Severn. It’s twilight, quiet and very still, and I’m with a small person, perhaps my niece: in the dim yet somehow energised light we’re hiding in a shrubbery cut and fashioned, vertically and in plan, into expanded Tangrams. We’re not hiding fearfully; we’re waiting for something that might be spooked by us in plain view — just as my sister and I hid in this field with our parents decades ago, to catch sight of badgers. I have with me, awkwardly, a set of old books or magazines, or perhaps sheet music, paper brittle and brown with age — I’ve placed it for safekeeping on a low wall a few yards away. We wait, in tense excited anticipation of we know not what.
Suddenly a wind arrives: seizes my books and whirls them explosively into the air. They burst into distinct pages — but then don’t separate. Instead they twirl and wind in the air, long ribbons of conjoined pages dancing like kite-lines. Every page now has the same image on it, a face — a stylised Tangram image of a dragon — and this flows and repeats all across the sky. The wind vanishes as suddenly as it came and every page begins to fall to earth, separate now, each acting as a parachute for its own little tea-light — though by some trick of dream logic the candle hanging below the page somehow backlights it from above.
“Is it a scary face?” asks the small person with me, more in curiosity than fear. The field is now full of small people, with their attendant grown-ups, and I can hear the reply murmured all round my, in adult and childish agreement: no, no, it’s a nice face.
(I woke from this dream open-mouthed with awe at its visual beauty, and scribbled it down straight away so as not to lose or distort it.)
An Internet Pestiary (part w/evs): Self-identifying as a boldly radical leftist, this type manifests rather as a puritan intellectual bureaucrat, with a gift for imprecise reading and labelling that’s two parts bigoted projection to three parts undeclared self-interest. No generosity; little curiosity; contradiction recognised only as a risible flaw in others, this recognition deployed only instrumentally, as a weapon. Actually quite rightwing, at least in local affect (local, it turns out, being nearly the entirety of the type’s area of activity…)
Who is/was “P” and why am I not to throw this away? Full text reads: “Doctors call this autoscopy. It is the moment when a person near death becomes detached from his own body. And it is a phenomenon opening up a scientific debate about the possibility of life after death. John Davy’s report, page 32”
(Sorry that my scanner cuts off all the margins: blame the Obs for their stupid magazine’s dimensions.)
(EDIT: What is this guy supposed to have died of btw? Some ketchup on his leg? The fact that the A&E team were too delicate to remove any clothing beyond one shoe and one sock?)
Moving ancient magazines round my shelves yesterday I found an impressively dreadful essay on Hendrix, complete with typically ignorant uninteresting conventional rock-crit swipe at “jazzrock” (which the writers in question knew literally NOTHING about, of course). Reminded that me that one thing I was a bit sad about early last year was not persuading Tom to explore Weather Report, pro and con, when he asking for revisionary steers.
Goths up trees!
This girl says “I love this tree”. I say “we all need something to love, don’t we?” I think she looks a bit cold. I would say “I love my cardigan” instead but then again I don’t take photos of myself sitting on cardigans. At least, not on purpose. Now there’s an idea for a blog! Goths sitting on cardigans!
Anyway, I admire her pluck for posing for this shot sans cardy when it’s clearly about 10°C. At least her neck is warm with her lolita neck thingy. Nice pentagram there. Boots appear to be Demonias. The nude lip is interesting. It’s daylight. Gah. I’m guessing she’s new to this game.
3 out of 5 - Pride will keep you warm.
