Thursday, September 22, 2011

MANY WORLDS (AN AFTER DINNER THOUGHT AWAY)

Towering piles of ledgers line the walls, floor to ceiling, between door and window, from window to door, hundreds, thousands, millions, in library after library, alcove after endless alcove downstairs from John Doe’s laboratory, down the spiral stairs from the locked and abandoned laboratory.

Stacks of stories, legends, the history of birth and death, love and pain, lust and letdown, beauty and its decadence, beauty and its constant destruction, the content of countless forgotten after dinner conversations, the content of trillions of after dinner conversations to come.

This, of course, is all happening on some page long lost to any recall, on page one hundred and sixty eight and page one hundred and sixty eight has forgotten, if it were ever aware, what had occurred to the selfsame characters on one six seven and can only dream of the horrors, the screams of beauty strangled, coming down on one hundred and sixty nine. Not a single soul anywhere has any notion of the title of the work, worlds away, sometimes above, sometimes below, heaven and hell, depending on just how the volume had been carelessly tossed onto the growing dusty heaps.


Each and every thought stirs, original or mundane, sparkling or dull, a new page for it to live upon, each page a world away, coded, unbreakable, impenetrable, filed and forgotten, a world away from the following lonely thought and the grandiose thought from the time before.

The Galán, holding a mirror up to a certain fragile moral flexibility, took his decision and ambled nonchalantly up to the three little drunken carnival clowns. “Girls! You have a thought? There is a new page for every thought!” He bowed most soberly.

John Doe had vaguely imagined, before he became dust, whilst he had perused these very same chambers and ledgers, he imagined ink seeping, bleeding from page to page as a disease was wont to seep from cell to cell. He could not see it, it was just intuition. He thought it and so it was. It was his final contribution. On page one sixty eight, between the third comma and the seventh h in the ultimate paragraph, or, perhaps, between the first comma and the second h of the penultimate paragraph. Too late. The viruses, the bacteria, they are out for his blood.

Sunday, September 04, 2011

THE TIRED UNIVERSE, PART ONE, STANISLAV’S STORY

THE STORY OF STANISLAV AND HIS SWEET TOOTH

Stanislav simply adores sugar. If one possesses a sweet tooth, it is not an arduous task to happen upon work. Many a world away he has made a comfortable fortune selling darling white slaves to the plantation owners to cover their peculiar pleasures in return for raw materials.


On this particular planet Stanislava suffers from receding gums, rotting teeth, and sells a halitosis that can turn one’s stomach over extraordinary distances. Not to be conserved in any manner but the most evident, this breath therefore comes with the complete package. For Stanislava, it is not an arduous task to stumble across work. No matter what for the money.

THE TIRED UNIVERSE, PART TWO, THE PERFECT ENNUI

They are supposed to be creating an appraisal of Hopkins’ The Leaden Echo. Some actually look like they are thinking. Supply teacher Miss Alba, at someone’s service, staring blankly, slow motion, at this class of seventeen year olds, at closer inspection, you might notice, staring at one of the class of seventeen year olds in particular, at The Pretty Girl. Miss Alba, at your service, daydreaming through the tired hours.

A May sun shines through the windows onto the faces and chests of girls struggling with the concept of ageing when they are still young enough to know they are ageless, immortal, still young enough not to even care about the decadence of beauty, The Beauty of Decadence. Who can blame them, really? I stare, surreptitiously I hope, at The Pretty Girl. Jone. Jone Johnson does think. I can see it in her eyes, fluttering, trembling eyelashes. I can see it in the way she moves. I can see the concentration written on her face. I face the group. The Pretty Girl is over there on my left, about fifteen feet away. Shadows add contours to the breathing swell of her adolescent breasts under the loose u shape of her low cut top wide on her shoulders. Shadows on breasts and as she writes and moves her left arm, without giving conscious thought to the movement, under her breasts, parallel to the edge of the desk, to tickle a rib or ease an elastic or metal support from an uncomfortable place, so her breasts change shape, swelling slightly under a silky black bra. I can trace the lacy top edge curving, nothing changes too much really, though I amplify this delicacy I daydream of touching to animate my future nostalgia for this all too brief moment.


So, from a prudent distance, I hope, I dreamt my fingers on those curves, I dreamt them where the curve of her breast lifts the silvery black strap of her bra from her skin until it flows over her collarbone, her right collarbone, it shines, strap and its shadow on skin slightly shivering, slightly trembling and so light from the window in front of her behind my back plays across her chest, over the swell of her breasts breathing lifts and darkens then lightens the shadow and I daydream of tracing the route of that shadow with my tongue down to the faintly lighter, more diffused shadow cast by the low neckline of her summer top these shadows a sweet curve across her right breast, umbra and penumbra sweep gently up to the dark line cast by strap at radiant collarbone waterfall a young and delicate mole to provide a modicum of surface reference, Ophelia slowly surfacing in the midst of an ocean to sing above the highlight of her right collarbone another mole a little to the right as I watch enraptured, on her neck, and I daydream my finger on it, my tongue licking away the tears I cry on her shoulder, ear on her breast hearing her heartbeat and I dream of drowning in her umbra and penumbra, and I scream and rant and sob and curse that perfect skin, these perfect shadows, this perfect musky scented flesh, this perfect concentration, this perfect thought, because so much beauty has such a short lifespan. I curse myself hoarse, but, of course, in my daydream, so, from a prudent distance I undress beauty, I daydream of the beast in me, who slowly pushes a fine kitchen knife into her breast, heartbeat boom boom, front door between her ribs, boom boom to say hello to her heart. Aüstein messer rostfrei, not the most direct route, true, but the most picturesque, I daydream the kind of thought you have when something dear is so near but yet, for ninety nine point nine percent of the human virus, so illicit. I daydream the kind of thought you daydream when you are living an instant of perfect ennui in this tired universe.

Peter put the book he had just finished reading down on the bedside table, sat up in bed and leaned across his sleeping girlfriend, who, irony of the moment, was called Alba too, to Alba’s table and picked up a pencil, Jone’s pencil. He then took up the paperback again, opened it and wrote a note, as was his custom, on the back of the embossed cover. “Page 109- on beauty, on an obsession with beauty” was added to, “Page 59- youth/humanity i.e. The human VIRUS”, was added to, “Page 62-72- ecstasy/language, the body as vehicle.”

I lay down in bed with the closed book on my chest and the room was screamingly grey and tatty and ordinary for that instant of adjustment from book to real life and it was just at that realization that I, me, Peter, understood that no book, no film, nor any other artistic creation was any more interesting than the world I lived in, but just more creatively described than any tale I could ever aspire to put into words or images “....in this tired universe.”

THE TIRED UNIVERSE, PART THREE, THE IMP OF MISCHIEF

Under our slightly soiled continental quilt radiates a warm glow rather akin to strong light pushing through fingers clamped over tightly closed eyelids.

Under the continental quilt I search the endless cotton seas for you, Alba, swishing sounding seas and rhythmic breathing in waves soothing the way to your lips bathed in warm bed peach light and you are floating in that tide, on a swell between what you hoped and dreamt was true what you know to be true. I lightly kiss your closed eyelid, your eyebrow, and you do not object. A slight moan and your head pitches and rolls gently in the white water, so I kiss your cheek and you do not object. I kiss your lips, I trap your bottom lip between mine, pull lightly, taste it with my tongue and let it fall back onto your night time brace, for both of you wore night time braces, and you do not object but flex your whole body in the hundred watt waves of yellowed white sheet cream white horses awakening sepia peach smile swimming between the sheets and so I understand that my apology has been accepted. I see you. I see the whole thing. I see it and feel it as a truly nice sensation, as a truly sweet moment in this tired universe and Jone grins at me from the wall opposite, her lips there, her torso too, The Imp of Mischief, this is domestic bliss. She grins at us both in truth, but you, still floating between worlds, like a leaf in a lake, like Millais’ Ophelia slowly surfacing in the midst of an ocean to sing, you are yet to be conscious of the music of the moment.


Outside a cool wind ruffles up a dark, moonlit storm of autumn leaves. Not a full moon. Just a slight cool moonlight.

Just half past eleven. Bedtime. First night in a slightly down at the heel, slightly musty smelling London hotel room eight hundred miles away from home, and Jone is showering with a shampoo and body gel that will radically transform her sensual, mildly musky smell for the worse, for she has forgotten to pack her herbal soaps, lotions and ointments.

On the twelfth floor of a tower block on The Cambridge Estate Peter and the neighbours hear the sound of the heavily booted feet of operatives from the T.B.A.P. (Tactical Bureau of Applied Politics) in the stairwells and hallways, then a short silence followed by a loud knocking and sounds of a short, but violent scuffle, a scream, more screams and pleading. They are taking their, the family on the next floor, they are taking their daughter away, all the sordid turmoil giving the lie to the commonly propagated faith that all these moonlight escapades are fabulations, second rate erotic daydreams, written into reality by malcontents, novelists, film directors, you name it, they propagate it, living instants of perfect ennui in this tired universe.

“Page 149- The girl’s body was discovered the following morning at low tide.”

Seven forty three. Pulling out of Hackbridge, four minutes late again, back gardens through sepia scratched and spat upon British Rail window. Dog collar commuter reflected in scratched and spat upon British Rail windows dog eared files and worn out video cassettes in a scuffed suitcase held on his lap under both hands. Dirty fingernails, blood under his nails. Blood on his hands. Profiles in suitcase. Decisions to be made, work to be done in this tired old universe.

Ten twenty six. The two held her down in the metal chair by her naked shoulders while another woman grabbed a handful of her hair in her left hand and thus held her head so the girl had to watch as the wasted looking blonde slowly pushed the knife into the teenager’s chest.

“You were getting old,” said the blonde. “She was getting old. Your turn next pretty thing....”

“Cut! Okay, okay, cut it!....Have I ever told you Stanislav’s story?”