idil's Journal

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a new year
		12:56pm 05/01/2007
	The sky is full of dead birds. Their eyes lifeless and dazed, their bodies hanging by strings attached to the clouds. The children still get on buses to go to school though. And people still cry and people still die. And some people push trolleys down supermarket aisles, their complexions washed out by the lights and their expressions anxious because this maze of consumerism confuses them and they only came in to get some milk. The world still goes on. Despite how quiet the mornings are. Despite how all laws pertaining to gravity/flight/air have been destroyed, as evidenced by limp hanging bodies and an overpopulation of insects. You call early in the morning, in the silence that's new to all of us. You don't know what to say and neither do I. So we just sit and breathe on the phone. Occasionally one of us will move a finger or rustle our clothes. But mostly we just try to keep our minds from focusing or settling on a single issue. It's all too unsettling. Two-thousand and seven....let's hope you are better than the last.
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		08:42pm 30/11/2006
	Over here, where I'm at, the night is making noises like a sleeping child, quiet contented whispers with the occasional whoosh of a long exhale. I, on the other hand, sitting here in a room with one lamp and a clock that's way too loud, am so silent that anyone looking at me might think that I was blinking in and out of existence. I should be doing work right now. There's so much of it piling up. But lately all I've been doing is avoiding and procastinating and then feeling guilty and panicking about all the avoiding and procastinating. Lately I can't summon the will to do much of anything except for write in my notebook. And I've been feeling so at odds with everything that needs to get done, all these looming obligations of real life, and with where my head is at... Last night, I had a dream about the floods. My mind, my consciousness always connected to what's happening back home. I can't really remember much about it. Just: tree branches like knives, a shrill crying (might have been people or animals, might have been the wind), cold, a wetness that seeps into the bones, an aching kind of tiredness... I jolted awake at 3am with my heart racing and fear like a bitter, desperate thing in my mouth. I couldn't get back to sleep after that. I sat in the kitchen til the sun came up, drank tea, wrote in my journal. Wrote about that time last year when me and M saw that kitten (the one with the bright yellow fur that we named simba. He used to wander into our kitchen in the afternoons, eat our food and stretch lazily in the spots of sunshine on the floor) get run over by a truck outside our house. The way its small body shook and shook and then finally, after what seemed like an eternity, lay still. Even though I haven't thought about this incident in really long time, as soon as I sat down with my journal it jumped to the front of my mind, wound its way down my arm and then escaped in a inky scribble onto the paper.
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ressurected like death corrected
		05:59pm 30/11/2006
	yes yes y'all...idil has decided, for reasons completely unknown to herself, to return to the world of online journaling... and to kick things off again here's an old one that i found stuffed in the bottom of my desk drawer when i was cleaning my room last weekend. i don't even remember writing this poem. (i remember why my elbow was aching though - an unpleasant accident involving me in a shopping trolley, a too-dark street and my friend's total miscalculation of balance and gravity...i've still got the scar to show for it) wednesday night my elbow aches, the joint scraped open & filled with the raw sense-memory of hard pavement & a night with no moon. alone in my room the next day, having dressed the wound & wiped all the blood off my sheets, i listen to russian pianists on the radio & the ache lessens. i think about taking a walk in the rain, feeling the world collect into little drops that run down my face & soak into my hair. but i don't. i think about going out dancing, maybe rubbing hands legs & hearts with other people somewhere in this dark city. but i don't. i think about visiting a friend, going out for coffee & talking about all the meaningless things that are important to us. things that are sad & fleeting, like what we're reading or who we're seeing. but i don't. instead i continue listening to the russians & marvel at how a few simple notes can seem to knit my skin back together. 8th oct 2005
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		08:30pm 17/06/2005
	This past week has felt, in equal parts, like a blessing and like a brick on my lungs. I am back in London. And as soon as I stepped off the train all I could see was the grey sky matching the grey streets and monochrome trees. I love this city but after a year in the countryside I can’t help but feel suffocated by how close together everything is, how quick the cars and people move. My eyes have become accustomed to stillness, to the way empty green landscapes contrast against the sky. Last week in Farnham, before I left, I sat in the field behind our house in the overgrown grass, small and hidden. I let the grass brush against my ears, let smoke from my cigarette drift out of my mouth and thought about burying my haunted antique guitar in the soil for someone else to discover since I never play it anymore. Last night, here in London, I sat on the chipped concrete floor of the backyard, gripped by insomnia, and watched the beams from the street lamps get absorbed into the dense dark clouds of the city night. I've spent this week indoors, enjoying the echo of the rooms in this house and reacquainting myself with the concept of television. I am alone in the house during the days and I watch the news for hours with the curtains drawn. The world’s falling apart more and more everyday, I think to myself as I stare at the screen. I drink my tea and wring my hands. I don’t think I have ever needed optimism more and yet I stumbled across a Bukowski poem on Tuesday and it has pushed me further into the very emotions it was trying to warn against. A little shrug and my eyes fixed on the flickering images. what can we do? what can we do? The last couple of months I have shifted between loving life and being enveloped by a deep sense of suffering that I can't understand. A malformed gnawing that refuses to let itself be truly known. Sometimes I think I can almost recognise this thing; I feel an intense familiarity in the pit of my stomach. But most of time, I've been trying to ignore it because this is the kind of thing that makes breathing difficult if I focus too closely on it, that makes my heart constrict and my head pound. I feared that I might start having strange dreams, that whatever I'm feeling would manifest itself in nightmares, in half-seen visions that would cause me to gasp awake in comprehension. But I've experienced nothing more than the usual crazy dreams, the ones where I am washing the dishes with a live blues band playing in one corner of the kitchen and a wild-eyed bard pacing near the window, walking in time with the words he bellows. Despite this peculiar feeling that flares up from time to time, life's been pretty okay. I've been revelling in the solitary time this week’s offered me. I read a short story about the desert the other day and now I want nothing more than to walk for miles and collapse onto moonlit sand. Wrap myself in a sleeping bag and watch coyotes and armies of scorpions cross each other’s paths. The desert seems like a good place to teach yourself how to forget, how to escape the act of remembrance. All that sand – perfect for sinking memories of touches and smells. I want to go to sleep with the moon high above me and wake with the harsh sun beating on my face, refreshed. I want to breathe in and feel the warm air sweep through my lungs and settle in my body. Today's been good. The sun was out and I spent half the day reading in the park and the other half dancing around the house to Beyonce. Yesterday was even better because I spoke to my favourite person and she made me laugh more than I have all week. She's coming to visit me soon hopefully....How have we spent almost six years apart, dear? Tomorrow will be a day of various bookstores and coffee... I'm planning to go for a bike ride tonight before it gets dark and then come back to disappear into the world of the Karamazovs. I think I'm falling under London’s spell once more, the apprehension of being back here draining from me. I can feel the brick starting to lift, my heart appearing from under it, lighter, less hungry and more open.
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still tired by the slow stretch of this

01:02am 29/01/2005

mood: a small rusty airplane

after the hunt – 26/01/05
took pictures of the sky that turned out purple
all my thoughts on art and architecture
wrapped around those blurred telephone lines
and the exposed leg of the man
begging on the street

i walked home with mud in my shoe
dared the frenzied city dogs to bite my leg
young mothers with straightened hair
pushed baby carriages toward me
with all the might of fatigued hunters

these days – 27/01/05
these days, i am
only philosophical about
contemplating thinness,
analysing the change of
my figure in the mirror

my posture has grown
accustomed to my solitude,
away from prying eyes
it has deteriorated accordingly

i grind my teeth in sleep
and run my fingers
over them during the day

i no longer have dreams
about kissing miles davis
now my back, my kidneys ache
and in all my dreams
i no longer have lips

payment - 28/01/05
failed dentist appointment,
the receptionist had smoker’s breath,
a chipped nail, bruised eye
"you have to pay for the treatment, you know."

i sat down, waited,
fiddled with a magazine
took out my pen, scribbled on my thumb
left my inkish fingerprint on the wall

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		08:53pm 02/01/2005
	last night's dream: a room. with plants and the sun beaming in through a window which is broken. a husband is asleep on the bed, he belongs to somebody else and he shouldn't be here. the floor is a mess. it is an explosion of papers, leaves and eroding tar. but there are flowers on a chair in the corner and the air tastes sweet, like maybe a birdsong recently occurred and settled on all the dusty books and both the dusty people. she goes to him, stands over him, touches his brow. thinks how glad she is that he hasn't spoken about promises to her yet. how grateful she is for their days. all spent in static, in brown soup bowls and cold touching noses. thinks about how they've written poems in all the recipe books and now they cannot eat. she thinks about how he is so nervous with her, always side-glances and panicky hands even when he is on the brink of sleep. and yet he trusts her with his scalp, letting her cut his hair every other week. sometimes he will light her cigarette before she can. and she thinks maybe that in itself is a little promise, a tiny 'don't worry'. he makes her forget all the places she misses. last night, when he thought her fast asleep, she saw him pick up her favourite sweater and put it to his face. Happy New Year, all.
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		03:49pm 08/09/2004
	i. this morning, downstairs in an empty house, i was cold. standing over the stove on one of the hottest days of the season, i heated up chocolate soymilk. everything echoes in the kitchen. the air whooshing in and out of my lungs was so loud it brought thunder to the warm air. crash and bang. knocking teacups off the counter. the wind outside was only a breeze. it stopped pushing pebbles on the street for a moment and seemed to say. 'this is adulthood. isn't it lonely?' ii. last night we said. q: what is contentment? a: gentle hands or a gentle heart. all the bedrooms in the world inside these four walls with soft sheets and windows that are dark.
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		11:38am 18/08/2004
	Woke up this morning half out of bed, my spine arranged dangerously over the edge of the mattress. I forgot to close my curtains last night and red sunlight, angrier and more aggressive than I've seen it in a while, streaked across my eyes. It was in this position (blinded, back sore and head sleep-heavy) that I decided to forego work. Today would be better spent writing and listening to all those new CDs I've bought over the last two weeks. Took the train over to Adam's new place last night after work. I took my camera and wished for a storm that we could watch through the windows as we sipped tea. His new place is beautiful in a wide, split-open kind of way. The walls are cracked, paint peeling and there's very little furniture (a table here, a lamp there) but the air smells like a freshly-peeled orange and the tiny balcony is from another time, a time when people gazed out wistfully over younger London streets and wished fond sweet prayers (or maybe hoped death and a plague) on the souls of fathers and brothers raping and pillaging new colonies across a terrible insomniac ocean. Me: it's good to have you back. I never know when you're here and when you're gone. Him: I'm always here, even when I'm gone. London is like that, it swallows you whole. Crushes your knees between its teeth so you can never leave it. He has acquired an old trumpet and is teaching himself to play. He tried to show me some notes, but my fingers turned clumsy and arthritic so the only sounds I was able to produce from the horn were awful shrieks. Quiet dinner. While he cooked, I sat on the kitchen counter and read funny stories out of some magazine out loud. We ate by the window and laughed like two crazy kids when we saw his landlady stumbling across the street (already drunk) on her way to the pub with her cat in tow.
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my mind is a house made of sand
		12:26am 08/08/2004
	i have hundreds of letters that i have never sent. they rest on my bedroom floor and whisper-tell stories that only my skin, my collarbones remember living. sometimes i wake before it’s light and run my hands over the words. then i get up, get ready and face noise and traffic jams and mornings that have forgotten how to be mornings. i look at these letters now, at this hour with all the street outside covered in darkness and neon and ink. they hold no appeal. watched a movie this afternoon, by myself. curled around three blankets and sweating, feeling all the world’s heat on the back of my neck, feeling the dryness of this season wrap around my shoulders in hot orange tongueless licks. afterwards, i lay on the floor and thought and counted my breaths. memories or fantasies in my head of this boy and that boy that i used to know. walking fantasies, picture fantasies, little parisian hotel room dreams. sounds of scraping feet in dim midnight towns. driving around the countryside in a car that breaks down every mile. staying in tiny rooms, choked bleeding pistol-rooms, small cramped boat-rooms. nothing in the air but the scent of clothes drying on the walls, the smell of old books, the sound of beats and a voice with a timeless flow. a while like this, my clothes stuck to my body, eyes closed and i couldn’t even pick out what was real and what was imagined. what had happened and what hadn’t. did we really spend that summer on rooftops singing down to the city and letting our shoes soak up the sunlight? did i really put my camera in strange places, in hidden gaps around the house and take secret pictures of his limbs, his expressions? man, i don't even know... a day alone and picking apart my thoughts, tracing and touching all the holes left by time. these autopsies are warm, my favourite things in the world.
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		03:54am 09/04/2004
	i can't sleep enough, i sleep too much. still recovering from last weekend where there was too much of a war behind my eyelids and too much of a party outside for me to shut them. i arrived back in london on monday dirty elated jittery-eyed and with a gash in my side, my kidney about to fall out. my moms wants me to get a job next week. with what i assume is a decent wage. none of that junkie work, walking through the seedy parts of town in the day and scratching letters on the wall, reading to the children that live in the dumpsters. i spent the afternoon lying in the grass of the kid's park yesterday. i remember an old man with one tooth, one arm and hair like waving hypnotised straw. i made up a story to knock him into unconsciousness, make him forget his missing wailing arm. this is all i can recall of it: once i lived inside a train wreck. a small cat kept me company and i fed him scraps of material ripped from the seats. my other friend was a hammer which i used to keep out cowboys and police cars. i named my new home 'sonnet' and on most nights i slept in the conductor's room, my feet cold and unblanketed. the old man seemed to like it. i remember him smiling, patting my arm right where that giant bruise swallows my elbow. london is getting to me today. right now this city makes me feel like an angry engine, banging my teeth together in the night, trying to make a racket over the racket. i can hear police sirens, a helicoptor outside my window. already i miss the beach and i wish i'd taken a night to sleep there last weekend, to wake up with the tide rolling over my face and in my lungs. tomorrow i think i will make a little ocean in my backyard. pile all the stones dirt and broken flowers together and watch the way they smother each other, listen to the way they roar and ebb and flow.
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Jazz lives

12:41am 28/01/2004

mood: bebopin'

Just came back from the Poetry Cafe where I read the new piece.

And earlier today I bought new shoes. They are beautiful, but have already clawed gaping wounds into the sides of both my feet. This'll be the end of me, I know it. This will be how I'll go - death by trendy sandals...

I befriended a Jazzman tonight. He gave me his CD and told me that I could have a regular spot reading on his show. He signed a copy of his book: "To Idil - Jazz lives."

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03:50am 09/01/2004

mood: no music is soul music...

A bath at two am. I washed my hair with that new strawberry shampoo and now my scalp smells like spring. The ceiling of our bathroom reminds me of a veil of fog. There is something translucent, overbearing but light about it. When I stare up at it I feel as rainforests do when they are being formed. Cool with apprehension brushing against my ears and neck.

This is the hour of night for my wants: I wish I could write like I used to. I wish I had more faith in my words, in myself. I wish I appreciated the beauty of the world every moment, instead of just noticing it occasionally. I wish, I wish, I wish....

I decided that soon I must compose a symphony. Something I can look back on when I'm old and my legs are derelict. It will have to be slow, woeful but full of soul too. As all-consuming as those weeping willows by the swamp.

Lately I've been drawn to industrial sites. It seems that there is a certain something about love and life that can only be expressed in metal, in grinding tanks, machinery against heavy brooding skylines. Tomorrow, my camera and I will take that long bus ride.

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		06:51pm 08/01/2004
	Spent the majority of today reading 'The Blind Assassin' (I thought it was about time since practically everyone keeps recommending it to me...but I'm not really that impressed with it so far) and humming splashes of some R&B song that came out when I was about fourteen and that seems to have lodged itself in my head sometime during the night. Took some pictures in the fading afternoon light. Wanted to play board games but there was no one else home. I told my mother the other day that, at one point, I would have been quite content to grow up into the life of a professor. I told her how I saw myself: at ease and middle-aged with short hair behind a veil, wearing long skirts that cover my knees and wool sweaters that hide my neck. My wrists would be stronger (years of thesis-writing having strengthened them beyond any orthodox form of exercise), but also gentler somehow, all the young skin shed away revealing a yielding form that I never thought possible. Mine would be a mainly noiseless existence, echoing in a way that is large but forgettable. Oak rooms, robust strong foundations that uphold eternal shelves of books and records. I would be married. He would have hair on his knuckles and like to sit in only one chair in the entire house. He would be tall and posses the kind of shoulders that resemble archaic structures, filling out every jacket, every room. He would play an instrument, the piano or maybe the harmonica. In this life, I would give birth to children. Two, I think. And I would tell them that I used to be a little bit of a 'free spirit' and show them how to belly laugh and dance, feel music in their hips and ribs. But mostly I would read to them, smooth down their hair at night, make them cocoa when it is raining, teach them the constellations and how to play chess. This is the life that I pictured for myself when I was very young, when I was still learning mathematical equations and liked nothing more than to make forts in the snow. But it feels dated to me now, feeble. And somewhat frightening. My mom seemed pleased, though. I think she especially liked the bit about the children. She smiled softly and caught my eye with a happy expression.
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		11:28pm 02/01/2004
	A new year. In the first few moments of it, we saw a small mouse give birth on the side of the road. We stopped the car and held our breaths, blinking slower than the snow falls. I turned away and hummed quietly until it was over. Jessi asked me what my plans are for this new stretch of time ahead. "Um, get a new job, one that I actually like, and make sure not to quit it. Read more. Travel more. Love more. Re-apply to university. Take over the world in tiny steps, tiny mutinies." Since I quit the last job things have been better. I have been writing letters addressed to no one, the space after the word 'dear' left blank. I've been smiling a lot, dancing a lot. I have been writing long pieces of poetry and leaving them around the house - on the walls, on pillows, baked into cakes. I have been thinking of open fields and of working each morning with my hands against the earth. These are good days, happy days. Also good: I bought my ticket to All Tomorrow's Parties last week. Spending the last of the money that I saved up from work shouldn't have felt this wonderful. May - I know I promised a super-long email TWO WEEKS AGO, but in that time I've been sick (I've barely left my house and I look like a fish) and possessed by the spirit of a tribal warrior who imprisoned me, made me write the bloody history of his clan and forced me to bathe his children. Will you forgive me if I send pictures of my new haircut, some poetry, and ideas for a comic that I have (inspired by my Dali-esque dreams and too much Burroughs) along with the original email? Happy new year, love. ( telephone wires/ocean waters )
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i hear war/ the stories the leaves bring as they fall
		06:40pm 15/10/2003
	boy soldiers and how their hands felt on that first trigger. how maybe the metal felt like death, terror, and the coolness of their mother's cheek all at once. the open-mouthed holes that they sleep in at night are wombs and the rain and mud just like blood and muscles. they all sleep with their spines curved, in small tight positions, facing each other, feet sometimes entangling. the emptiness of the land around them is endless and feels like the space in their chests, the hollow stretch of loneliness between the front and back of their ribcages. their hearts do not beat anymore, but echo and murmur, mimic the wind. i keep these boy soldiers behind my eyelids during the day and when i sleep, my dreams draw them out. i cover them with blankets as warm and welcoming as collarbones. i kiss their foggy frowning brows and run my thumb over the spideriness of the small bones in their wrists.
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		01:00am 02/10/2003
	Today at work: -I talked to a man who told me that all people born on the first of any month are blessed. He had a long coat and hands that wound around each other. -Mina, the one no one likes, told me that I have a classic face. And that I should have some food instead of all that tea because I'm losing weight. -My boss asked me whether I liked books more than people as I spend all my break and lunch times reading. -A guy who came to give a form in told me, as he rubbed his hands on his trousers, that he'd just come out of prison and hadn't been with a woman in four years. I keep having strange dreams. I went through a period of only being able to remember my dreams if I left music on as I slept. But now I have no trouble remembering: landscapes of blue and my body stretching down like poetry lines, tumbling hills and a plague. Sometimes, in these dreams, I am a man. Breasts flatten against my chest, shoulders broaden and my legs get longer. I wake up feeling clumsy, out of place. Weary, as if long distances are behind me. This morning I played in the leaves on the way to the bus stop and their crunching sounded like fawn bones breaking under my feet. I miss being younger and the way the contours of my spine felt softer then. I miss May and all the parks we conquered in ol' Ottawa town. Last Thursday, River and I went to see The AM. Once we'd dodged our way past all the really tall hipster kids, it was pretty great. They didn't sound at all like the music Parker and Michael used to make with Jeff, but definitely good in an unexpected kinda way. Earlier, Adam called to tell me about his vision of us in fourteenth century China. He said I was his demure wife with eyes cast down low and my skirts pooling around me on the floor as I sat. Things I'm excited about (but wish I had someone to accompany me): -seeing Spirited Away tomorrow night. I'm going straight after work and I hope that the one they're showing at my local movie theatre is subtitled and not dubbed. -the BFI film festival this month. Also...I am going to see all the uni friends this weekend. Going back to Royal Holloway makes my breath hitch. Egham station swallows trains and I've never seen hungrier platforms. It just reminds me of the first part of this year, of that Heaviness bearing down on my ribs and the way I hated everything about my course and that place. But still, it'll be good see them. I know Juliette will do an impression of some celebrity that will be uncanny and I'll laugh and laugh, we'll listen to Missy Elliot and Justin and the knot in my stomach will unfurl when faced with long-winded jokes and pop music.
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sitting in cars and talking

07:28pm 20/09/2003

mood: the hand-written essays and

our car lies under the tree and i tap on the windows, my knuckles more hollow than the glass. through the lens of the windshield the stillness outside seems wider.

i run my hand over the roof. the paint there is different, bumpy and newborn.

i tell you the first word i ever said was 'ash'. it was short, hot and fell off my lips, burning the carpet. you tap your knee, laugh and say you believe me.

you suggest that we go somewhere to eat. but i decline, explaining that my stomach does not digest food, only vowels. the fatness of the 'O' is especially satisfying.

you laugh again and take my hand.
your middle finger bleeds onto mine from where you bit the nail into the skin.

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we sat and put our heads together and our hands to the furnace.

10:04pm 10/09/2003

mood: i use my memory like a weapon

after work today, vishti and i went for coffee in a crooked cafe. we talked about integrity and compromise and what this/that means to us, where we are going now and where we aren't going. i struggled, with hand gestures and with stops&starts, to explain about the existence maintained in the moment of time before stoplights change. i will compose it on paper and entitle it 'a life in amber'. on the way home, i thought about the leaves on the trees and how the canal behind the bus stop looked tired. i thought about my own tiredness, in my fingers, in the centre of the bones. i thought about the buses and all the high school essays i wrote in the early mornings against their seats. my words haunt those seats.

after not smoking for a month and a half, i had three cigarettes tonight.

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		09:26pm 08/09/2003
	my head felt cold and detached this morning. i left early and arrived in enfield town when it was practically deserted. i walked around, my steps being swallowed by the puddles left over from morning dew. i wanted nothing more than to stand around in the corners where buildings connect and toe at the pavement. but i continued on, looking in the windows of stores just opening up. i was reminded of rimbaud's words: and so i went, hands thrust in torn pockets, my coat more idea than fact. returning to work was strange, edgy. everyone seemed nicer somehow, wanting to know if i was feeling better and what did i have and "oh, flus are just awful, aren't they, awful". i can't wait until i can leave this place. it's too closed-in, everyone so settled and familiar with each other, desks an extension of their torsos. nothing destroys me more than small talk and side-glances. i can feel myself beginning to hate this, the routine of this (get up-work-get in-read-sleep-repeat). i checked over some bank statements this weekend and realised that if perhaps i could stop myself from purchasing books/cds and if the concept of saving didn't complete bypass me, then i would have had quite a bit of money for The Objective by now (morocco! stop tugging on my heartstrings and whispering in my ear and grasping at my elbow. i am coming!!) had lunch with vishti and we sat in some ancient graveyard in the centre of town and talked about art and told funny stories about theft. on my way home, i saw two small children, dressed identically with their eyes set the exact same distance apart in their faces. their mouths did not move but this is what i heard them say to each other: boy: i think it all started with a bang -BANG- fireworks written across a void. venus was the first to form and her skin cooled and was tender. And there's a lighthouse in the void, looming and -and flaming, bigger than big ever should be. girl: are there roads? what are they like? made of light on the sun, fire on mars? will they burn my wheels, my palms? romance is in the wheels, in the road and in the fist! boy: but wait. focus on the bang, initial and massive and nothing more should be asked for. the noise, white and spreading. that is how it started, it never sleeps, just lives for exploding and expanding, covering over, under- girl: what about the seas?! for, what is a lighthouse to navigate if there are no seas?! what is there to orchestrate if not the waters and the sailors in their ships made of phosphorescence, made of disjointed particles that break apart if a hand passes through them. when i sleep tonight, i will dream of space.
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summer two-thousand and three
		03:21pm 06/09/2003
	Village trip: We walk around the village in the silence of early-morning darkness and wait for the cafés to open up and sing. This village sits on the hipbone of the ocean, resting there, teetering on the curve. But after a while you hardly notice the rocking anymore. We pass around a large carton of Ribena Blackcurrant. I don't even smoke anymore and how empty the space between my first two fingers feels. This feels like the time we pushed each other around on the train tracks, the wind on my face making me feel about six again as we ran. Breath pant breath pant breath pant. This is, of course, calmer, not as fun and hectic and draining, but I still feel little and I push my hands into the dark sand. I don't know why but I fear death by sunrise, only soft humming can soothe me. And my hands work and work, forming shapes and then destroying them. If you were to look down from a great height at the three of us sitting there like an ink clot or a blood stain, you wouldn't see how our rapid blinking conducts the waters and pulls the moon. On our way there, we: Made up stories about the people on the train, as if they were suspended puppets, swollen and tender from the pull of strings. I assauge their aching limbs with a click, a camera flash and the streetsigns outside like an ointment. We pass an abandoned car lot, rustier and even greyer in June than I imagine it ever is in winter. Makes me think of playing hide-and-seek amongst the hollowed metal, child-hands lifting flaps and nestling into dents. I remember this with a clarity that aches although I've never been here. We each took turns playing chess with a six-year old in front of the café sporting black-rimmed genius spectacles. He had a gap between his two front teeth and he posed so shyly, head tucked into the hollow of his collarbones, for the picture that I took of him. His mother said that he usually didn't take to strangers, but there must have been something he liked about the reserved curve of our knuckles as we moved our pieces across the board. ---------------------- Summer Rainstorm on South Road (16/07/03) The season twists and turns, the scent of wet grass and thunder-bruised sky never lingers long enough to accept the small tokens of an upturned vehicle and a red bicycle with a flat tyre. A fox with a damp coat and lethargy around its neck pauses to sniff the patch of dirt near the widow's house on the corner. And patient-footed snails tip-toe around ravine-like cracks in the sidewalk. Two cars kiss bumper-to-bumper and weeds sprout hoping to taste the sky, lacking of hands yet relying solely on touch. Two flies quickly rub their limbs together as if plotting and then continue ascending the window pane. Their plan seems simple enough: climb and climb in this smoothness and never give into the comfort and grittiness of the corners. The butcher stares past them out the window and thinks of blood and strechy ligaments. The stuffy moisture of the air (hard to inhale and impossible to exhale because it settles itself onto the lungs and refuses to let go) feels stranded, pleasant on his face. Under his fingernails, it is a red-coated city with the lights out. Thinning hair standing at attention, resembling blades of grass deliberately overgrown for purposes of hiding, playfulness. (The flies murmur longingly about the texture of his gleaming scalp.) The girls in rags across the street compose symphonies on a broken toy keyboard and an old boombox, their booty-shakin' becoming elaborate ballet steps executed with flourish and only runied by the moment they lose their concentration, giggling and bumping into the Edmonton brick walls. Their arms are long, thin and with every graceful sweep they rid the world of colour. Quickly following every rain storm, the worms rush to regroup but are mangled and humbled under heel or drowned in too deep puddles. This season engages ice cream trucks, bikes rides and murder (how light a gun feels in the hand when the sky is this blue!). Persephone works the next street over, smiling widely and splashing around in heels. Her short skirt and winks make you realize just how much she missed the world above. The underworld drains her skin and intensifies the stance of her shoulder blades every year. It is good to be back. ---------------------- Met Vishti at the new job, saw her artwork and wrote pieces to accompany. Fight This place feels like it's at the end of world. Either that, or the weight of the whole world is pressing down on it. The walls are high and heavy, covered in tattoo-like murals that give the impression of the place closing in on itself, folding neatly into the palm and laying itself down delicately. One atom bumping into another and causing an inky black explosion across the mind like oil. That is the feel of this place. Swarming with the traffic of meeting eyes and passing touches, it seems busy even though it's not. Populated by people which have their names preceded by actions, like Screamin' Suzie and Weepin' Johnnie. And you can see the truth in these names: Suzie's mouth is tight and strained trying to hold the yells in, the corners of Johnnie's eyes are constantly damp. When the four of them walk in, they soften the air, greying the room. No one has seen anything like them before. Lines sleek and uncompromising. Conversation drains qucikly and completely dries up. And all the people with the active names watch inactively as they walk forward, nothing but aggression pouring off them in waves. The curves of their shoulders, the tilt of their heads say one thing: fight fight fight! They are barb-wire wrapped in elegance. Hoods The towering industrial beams of the city at dusk, how they knit together with complexity in the air, turning and sliding. The angle of the sun when it's low and staring them in the face, how it sometimes hits the back of their heads lightly. These are a few of the things that used to concern them. Back before they could remember, when they were little and their hands knew only the firmness of bicycle handles and not guns. The Hoods have been standing on the same street for what seems like years. Their faces are young but their hands and hearts are hard, roughened by too many bruises and the shape of knuckles. They spend their time kicking up dust in front of the convienance store, making car chases and gun slinging into an art form. In the daytime they converge in the dim of alleyways, at times passing baggies of Substance between each other, other times philosophising on life, death and the essentiality of good love. The cover of night affords them the luxury of disguise and they can come onto the streets, sit around, jimmy the locks of cars, and start up Ruckus with only the neon of Indian take-out joints to highlight their movements. Lice The desk is narrow and traps his legs. The classroom feels soft around him, a cotton casing that fails to comprehend the Grating going on in his skull. His head is on fire, a battlefield. And that thought almost makes him laugh as he envisions little lice in trenches with guns, a long dry strip running across the middle of his head: No Man's Land. But, of course, he doesn't laugh. His throat won't allow it, having long since succumb to the Inferno descending from his head and promptly dried out. His teeth and hands too have been affected, grinding and shaking. His feet tap of their own accord. His skin feels pulsing, not his own. Irritated and ready to shed itself. He looks around and tries to breath. He can almost see the Calm of the cotton in the walls, lining the ceiling and the blackboards. He attempts to access it, let it overwhelm him. It doesn't work. It's hard to try and channel serenity when the top of your head feels scarred and ancient, an old wound that never healed properly. His scalp is waging a mutiny and the rest of his body has heard the cries, is taking up arms and repeating the chants. Calling desperately for distraction, the boy looks down at the book open before him on the desk. The words swim, blur together and mix into a raging ball of sharp-edged vowels and jagged consonants. The boy looks around again, this time almost frantically. (he wants to shake his head HARD, maybe that will get rid of it, maybe that will send this pit of Agony gathering in the centre of his mind flying) And as he does so, a burning shade of red begins to infiltrate his vision, gradually coming in from the corners of his eyes, hardly noticeable at first but slowly, with the redred of opening petals, taking over. (where is this coming from? blood in the eye, in the mind. and that itch!) He can't see! It is completely obscuring his world now. The cotton of the classroom is no longer so tranquil but now wet and soaked through by the red. He imagines it would feel soggy if he touched it. He doesn't remember raising his hand, yet it is up and he is waving it slightly. (help me, help me!) In the sea of red, the teacher at the front behind her desk looks like she is drowning. ---------------------- Spent a lot of time in galleries and coffeeshops, sitting in parks (the little islands of green dotted all along the city), working at the new job. Went to a few gigs, read extensively, attempted to capture everything that I could on black & white film. Wrote, wrote, wrote. Saw some friends that don't mean as much as they used and saw some that mean much more. Felt a bit suffocated moving back to this house, but all the same I reacquainted myself with it as if its body was that of an old lover. Drank endless cups of tea. Got ill twice. Developed a love for sunrise and dusk. Thoroughly enjoyed Harry Potter 5. Urged my sister to get me lots of free books when she was doing her work experience for Ottaker's. Formed a secret midnight society comprised of women with strong thoughts and even stronger convinctions. Went out clubbing, went to Cheapskates countless times. Laughed lots. Cried lots.
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