the road to nowhere

I am on a path of ideas. I have to keep walking. There is further to travel to reach my destination. Continue with me if you will.

Do we use methods of capture to keep a safe distance between ourselves and our reality, ourselves and our experiences, ourselves and our former selves? Do we seek to put a frame around moments so they are contained and cannot leak beyond the boundaries we allow them. Does this extend beyond the stasis of photography. Is it at play in films trapped on celluloid and wound onto concealed reels? words inked into bottom-drawer diaries? conversations ended with knowing silence?

‘maybe I shot the video tape so I wouldn’t have to remember it myself’ David Freidman

I wonder if all things look better from a distance? Up close we are microscopes to every imperfection. With time and distance the serrated edges of emotion grow blunt - so we can press against them with little fear to our paper thin skin. In their time smoothed surfaces we see a little of ourselves, but mostly just them.

‘you pass through boredom into fascination’ Adam Phillips

Writing becomes universal and somehow more profound when read at a time when the acute meaning has dimmed. Like large works of impressionist art. Up close we see blocks and dots of colour and paint - take a few steps back and a masterpiece greets us.

As I retreat from this room I look at the far wall, and ask… is it leaving me - am I leaving it - or is the parting mutual?

paper poses

This island melts to soft focus - my eyes threaten to drip from their sockets to the page. Thought shifts to photographs. To faces frozen in time - expressions locked for lifetimes to come. People inkpinned to paper.

Some of my favourite photos of my favoured friends are those they probably like the least. Images where their mind has left the building that is the body. Vacant possession. They are sham castles - all flashy front but nothing to inhabit.

Their eyes are empty of meaning, thought, life. They have been bled dry by madness, misery, or distracting thought. They hold two dimensional poses - as if they painted themselves that way that day because they knew the only thing they would be fit for is a quick dip in a chemical bath and an early burial between the pages of an unread book.

right

left

down

up

angels with silver wings

Its not for me to mourn something I never knew, to cry over someone I never lost. I don’t want to pick over the ashes of the remains of the day. Its not right for me to keep my silence for two minutes just because the papers tell me to. Silence cant stitch together the holes we tear in time.

I don’t want to be told when to remember any more than when to forget. Within my mind all knowledge is mine - to play, rewind and erase as I see fit. I don’t want mourning marked on my calendar like the chalk lines around cartoon murder victims.

I want to be surprised. I want to be scared. I want to be caught unawares and grabbed by the throat by a memory best left forgotten. I want to be made to remember something that didn’t happen rather than something that did.

On Sunday 4th June memory paid an unexpected visit. A chance call to remind me that she guides my hand more than I care to admit. A year to the day and she called my name - turned my head from rain to flame. She is the messenger - the bright burning angel who speaks for the silenced. Singing songs of echoes of echoes of echoes.

And to take myself back to where I began, I tell you that what she told me is not yours to know. But I’ll give you a precious fragment of what she gave me, that -

The truest promises are those that never come to pass.

On Sunday 4th June, in a place not made for your eyes I wrote -

‘This is a blank space. A series of backspaces to erase what was previously laid. To pick it up in its delicate entirety - and carry it to another place, another day.’

This is that place. And today is that day.

I pad through the dark

You are the bonfire burning four or more gardens away. I never left the house but I’m sure I lit the fire. Sleepwalking with nothing on my feet but a spark between my teeth. Sleepwalking sweet pyromaniac dreams. I whispered you into ignition.

Embers flutter through the air. Black moths of memories lost. Twisting like discarded letters - spelling out the secrets we tried to burn. I wait and watch as they fall to where I lay. To where I came to rest at last. Ever grey on white skin. Fading into my pores - they spell your name.

all those sweet conspiracies

It seems like I am forever writing sentences that spin around the pivot of one or both of these words.

I write them back to front, upside down, even in a mirror, but they never make sense. One sounds long - a murmur, a rumble, an echo. The other is a soundproof door - closing me out or closing you in - I’m not yet sure which.

Then tonight I notice something new. Something previously hidden within these words. In remember there is ember. In forget there is forge. And so their eternal reliance on each other become clear. The forge where our cast iron tomorrows are wrought - fed by embers, those glowing fragments of dying yesterdays. Words within words should never be ignored.

Knowing this I tie these words to ribbons and let them hang above me while I sleep - an unlikely mobile that permeates my dreams. Everyday I wake up asking - is there something I need to remember, or something I’d best forget?

glowing bronze, steering on

There is one particular road, on the way between here and there. A road I use on the few days when I turn my back on the sea and head inland.

A road where the music in my head comes alive. It trebles in volume, clarity, intensity. It lifts me from the pavement and carries me along. Low to the ground but gliding.

A road of harmonious oppositions. On one side those houses that all look the same. You can hear their shouting from the outside - even with the windows closed. On the other a graveyard. Deep and crisp and even. I don’t feel fear or sadness when I look through the railings - I’ve always felt comfortably alone in a crowded place.


Maybe it’s the lack of traffic. Maybe it’s the size of the trees. But suddenly I see where I am - fifteen odd years on and I am back where I began. I think the trees were smaller then, or maybe I was taller. Before I grew up. I was a little thought, on a little bus, from a big school.

And even then I was wrapped safe within my world of sound, muffled by blankets of necessary noise. And I realise so little has changed. And so much. I glide on, bittersweet in the familiarity of being me.

The proverbs claim - ‘It is not the destination that is important, but the journey there’. I disagree.

random symmetry

I’m walking up a road named after distant royalty. It could be any road - it could be any name, on any day. Any day is any day until you name it today.

When I walk I don’t look ahead - that’s too predictable for me. Sometimes I look behind, but that’s risky, especially on a sunny day or a Sunday. Instead I look down at what’s beneath my feet. You’d be surprised at the things I see.


Today it’s a smattering of puzzle pieces. Bright blue against pavement grey. Abandoned jigsaw logic. All eager protrusions and holes. Begging to be fitted together - to combine into sense amid nonsense. Scattered outside a churchyard - but that’s beside the point.

It means nothing to me. Absurdity amid antipathy. But to someone somewhere this is everything that they search for. Perhaps the missing pieces are those that will complete and reveal them.

Or perhaps, more likely, these are the bits that had to be lost. To leave a window to look through the picture we build up piece upon piece, layer upon layer, day upon day. Now that these pieces are gone - from her frame to mine - she can look through the blue to what lies beneath.

listening to the silences

‘The words stick in my throat.
They gag me and make me choke.
They starve me of all breath
and leave me no strength to name them.’

Or so I said on 21st July 1997. And they have lingered there ineloquently for nine years - until this week, when they start to riot and rumble.

This is their time. Time to chew through the vines of compromise, the seaweeds of politeness that bind them up and tie them down. They sway in unison so the tide rises within and I swallow back against the force of the oceans they crawl from.

They strike up a chorus of protest that echoes and reverberates through my chambers and tubes, and emerges through my lips as a gurgle, a burble a bleat. The time is right. They are ripe. They are free. Spring is in the air and its time to flee the nest that was me.

Sick of huddling in the shady cave at the back of my throat, they run out and dart to the tip of my tongue - taut and primed like a spring board. I am strong, I am high, I am elastic. Take a deep breath - prepare to jump.

scattered truths

reap just what you sow

Prompted by a particularly bountiful harvest I thought I would share my quote taking habits with you.

When I read I amble along the lines, step by step, word after word. Sometimes I run and sometimes I jump over gaps, large and small, paragraph to paragraph. Always ready for the tricky manoeuvre of climbing from one page to the next - I keep moving onwards in my travels.

But sometimes I stop. I stand still and gaze at the lines I have just traversed. There is something about them that makes me linger. Makes me take out my pencil and paper camera and capture them for my album.

Maybe its just a handful of words that together spell beauty and wonder - that hold my breath. These I will save to return to at those times when I need to steady my exhalations.

Or maybe it’s a creature with little hooks, that has gripped me, and sticks to me - begging to be carried onwards, demanding my attention to return to him, to talk to him, to answer and ask more of him. These I will save as questions to return to, to think more of - to perhaps guide me inward, backward, onward.

even the rain bows down

The word meniscus doesn’t sound like its meaning.

It sounds like an oath - a dedication to cruelty or revenge. It sounds like the late night whisper of a young girl with evil eyes and sharp fingers. A girl who will tear a gap in the night sky - an everpresent white reminder that will burn until you are old.

A promise served up with ground glass, cloaked in innocence and strawberry scent. But a promise that the dark fairies cheer to hear. A pledge to have her revenge against the tooth fairy.

Never forgiven for collecting her first teeth. Her pure diamond edged incisors. No milk white meekness for her - hers were the teeth of the past. The bite of the primitive inside everyone.

She will wait. And one day, as sure as the moon hangs high, that hand will slide beneath her pillow - and she will reclaim what is hers, and yours, and more besides. And she will dance away, dressed in enamel and clattering and chattering and forever ready to bite.

gravity always wins

I am sitting with Hanif Kureishi. Its Wednesday. I am facing the sea, backlit by the first true sun of the year. Together we consider what it is to write - the whys as much as the hows. We currently ponder the difference between literature and philosophy - and Mr Kureishi points out -

‘Reading a novel was like being with a fascinating person who was showing you their world. For me, philosophy was another kind of concentration. Theories seemed ways of creating apprehension. I found that it is not always answers you find here, but better questions.’

Suddenly this delicious thought is interrupted by a hand forcing a small leaflet into my smaller hand. A leaflet printed on poor quality paper and emblazoned with a Hollywood technicolour vision of hell.

A handout from everyones favourite door-to-door seller of redemption. As I study the people who look like they have been lobotomized by an overeager dentist, or drugged by radioactive fruit - I even begin to distrust the moose - is there not something overly knowing in that velvet smile?

And then I realize I recognise this paradise. Its Oz. Resplendent fakery. Somewhere there is a little man behind a curtain manically pressing buttons to manufacture this grand illusion of peace and harmony. And like Dorothy I feel a little sick, I want to go home, back to the black and white of Kansas. Back to my free-thinking meander through these monochrome pages.

If thinking of better questions is suffering then damn me to an eternity of philosophy.

liquid diamonds

When she cries she pays back her debt to the waves. She lets little fishes swim across her face. She calls the seagulls to dive and soar. Theres drumrolls in the thunder and the angels start to roar.

When she cries she drops out questions. Whats in a tear? - a rainbow, a kiss, another year? When she cries she falls apart like broken glass - crystal clear for those held tight, held near or dear.

When she cries shes the spiral in your eye. A wonderland, a nightmare and nothing in between. I've seen the blind form a queue and pay with their eyes just to listen to her cry.

love letters

She told me to eliminate words. So I did. When she starts to speak I draw in my breath - a suck of a whoop and I have swallowed a couple of phrases and she is left mouthing like a mute on a street corner. No-one listens. No-one notices.

When she writes I follow along a line behind and lick the page where she has laid her thoughts. My rough tongue laps up the little letters and she is left all gappy, incoherent and blank. No-one understands. No-one cares.

the constant gardeners

This is the light garden. The day and night garden. The place we toil and tend. This is the garden of the sky. This is the tree of days. This is the place where we feed and water and breathe with laughter.

We are the gardeners - growing thin. Growing answers that are growing dim. Choked by weeds that curl around our ankles with their constant questions.

And here is the girl who sits in this garden - on a bench repainted many times - with a piece of blue wool tied to the armrest - to remind her of things best left forgotten. She doesnt like surprises - she doesnt like shocks. So we tend to keep the seasons in check. To give her somewhere safe to sit by herself. Inside herself. On a bench repainted many times.

water