GIRL IN A SUICIDAL LANDSCAPE

Someone said

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:10:15 +0100

'Will is mysteriously absent. I can only assume he’s reacted badly to your defection to Brendan and thrown himself down a ravine.'

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Someone said

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:36:59 +0100

'Well, the next time we make inappropriate purchases with other people’s money I want you to stop mixing poisonous mushrooms in your wine, it’s not doing your memory or sensibilities any favours.'

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A film of ‘mists and mellow fruitlessness’

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:55:26 +0100

I hardly ever frequent mainstream cinema, primarily because I don’t like new releases especially ones that set out to chronicle the life of someone I respect and admire. Thus going to see ‘Bright Star’, a film about the elegiac potentate of lovelorn verse John Keats, was an enterprise doomed from the start. While I have always been aware of Keats I only read about his life a couple of years ago and what I’d learned inevitably led me to conclude that Keats had been afflicted with some sort of morbid chronobiological disorder. Having spent most of his life obsessively fixated with the idea of death, Keats' tragic poverty-stricken end arrived at the vernal age of 25. He passed away in a foreign land, torn from the woman he loved, believing he had left no footprint in the world. The film, 'Bright Star', bearing the name of one of Keats' poems, reconstructs the last three years of the poet's life.

And like Aristotle’s theory of tragedy it relies on climatic procession of dramatic events that have claim upon universal trappings namely those of love, loss and thwarted happiness so in that respect, and every other, it is a story unremarkable in any particular except a haphazardly assembled cast and all the elements of a mawkish BBC period drama. Jane Campion forgets to explore the spiritual dimensions of the two people at the cynosure of the story, not only that she overlooks the essence of it in favour of more mundane details such as Keats' struggle to succeed, Fanny's obsessive following of fashion and Mr Brown's over-laboured laments over the couples budding romance. What's more, the ill-fated lovers make an ill-match. There is no chemistry between them whatsoever in fact there's more of it between Miss Browne and Mr Brown. Ben Whishaw's Keats is reduced to a gormless, rawboned, coughing daydreamer. While Abbie Cornish, her flaxen tresses a modest brown and her face puritanically achromatic, assumes the role of his beloved with maladroit refinement and little conviction. The film leaps in to tedium from the first ten minutes onwards as Campion relays her vision with a cloying reverence for romance and all the ineptitude of a provincial matchmaker.

Essentially the film lacks passion which is so clearly evident in Keats' epistles to his beloved, and his immediate circle of friends. Had Campion bothered to research her subject she would have perhaps picked up on the fact that Fanny Brawne both confused and exasperated Keats as much as she enthralled him. Keats wrote to his brother George on the subject: 'Shall I give you Miss Brawne? She is about my height with a fine style of countenance of the lengthened sort - she wants sentiment in every feature - she manages to make her hair look well - her nostrils are fine though a little painful - her mouth is bad and good - her Profile is better than her full-face which indeed is not full but pale and thin without showing any bone - her shape is very graceful and so are her movements - Her arms are good her hands badish - her feet tolerable.... She is not seventeen - but she is ignorant - monstrous in her behavior flying out in all directions, calling people such names that I was forced lately to make use of the term Minx - this I think not from any innate vice but from a penchant she has for acting stylishly. I am however tired of such style and shall decline any more of it.'

But of course he could not decline. It was already too late. And in turn Keats became a new man one who had previously declared that any creature in love 'cuts the sorryest figure in the world' to someone for whom 'love' became a 'religion' and a thing so sacrosanct he was ready and willing to 'die' for it. Campion doesn't document this transition, nor its impact on Keats' work, which should not be underestimated, as it was during this particular period of his life that Keats matured and developed his craft. Love proved an impetus and an inspiration without which he would have had nothing to brood over. Campion however curtails the passion to a simple case of two people thrown together by proximity and convenience and therein their vested interest in one another seems staged and superficial.

But really, everything about Jane Campion's endeavour to enlighten the laymen about one of the most influential Romantic poets reinforces the popular misconceptions about poetry and its forefathers. There's something jejune, even juvenile, about her Keats. His jealousies, fancies and general traits resemble those of a capricious and mumbling infant while Abbie Cornish can't quite project a coquettish or facile enough Miss Browne and thus there is a monumental discord between the two characters which creates an impression of them both being completely out of sync. Every aspect of the film is genuinely mediocre, and typical of its genre, which is ironic seeing as the story was anything but. Again, Campion's oversight of small yet crucial details, all of which are documented in Keats' surviving letters, shows a rather slack attitude on her behalf. More importantly, however, I resent Campion for failing to explore and thereby portray the story with any depth or intelligence and furthermore boring me more than any one of Jane Austen's assaults on literature courtesy of the BBC. In short, 'Bright Star' is neither bright nor deserving of any stars. But Keats still rules!

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Someone said...

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 17:29:17 +0100

'I trust my little piranha is having an enjoyable day.'

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Spotted

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 14:15:55 +0200

My mate, Ian Brown, swaggering down Bayswater road in a pair of red-black-and-white trainers.

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The Times they are a-changin'...

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:46:53 +0200

I am my second week in to buying The Times on a daily basis - I do it for the free books. And while normally I would hastily flick through the 'news' section from today onwards I have resolved to dash it straight in the bin cos that's where it belongs! On second thoughts I shan't, I shall select the most ridiculous headlines and post them on here.

And today's winners are:

'Ever wondered why we drive on the left but stand on the right? Step back to the 1920s' One word: What?

'Condom and Pill share equal place in women's affections' Ten years ago a headline like that would only have been acceptable in Sex Trade Weekly.

'Brown: it's chock chip' Frankly the only headline I ever wanna read about Gordon Brown is: 'Brown: I quit!' and not about his preferred variety of biscuits.

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Spotted

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 13:49:57 +0200

Gloria Hunniford wearing an offensively bright orange jacket while being filmed behind Ted's Veg Stall in Whiteley's .

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Spotted

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:59:08 +0200

Tom Parker-Bowles biting his fingernails.

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Someone said...

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 14:27:42 +0200

'She likes drinking, smoking and fucking. In that order.'

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To Speak of Cunt That Is Damien Hirst

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 07:36:34 +0200

Finally the day has dawned when media darling, and byproduct of the stringently, commercialised, shallow turn of the millennia, Damien Hirst has fallen from grace. The national press has almost unanimously declared Hirst a fraud as he opened the doors to his newest and most inexorably arid, self-indulgent and boorish artistic realization at the classical Wallace Collection.

Having ran out of ideas, pickled livestock and bedazzled human remains he presented a series of 25 paintings under the appellation 'No Love Lost, Blue Paintings'. Standing proudly beside two of his works encased in ostentatiously aurelian frames, with his marmot eyes snug behind the 2mm lenses, Damien perorated: 'They're all by me!' At least he had the balls to own up, because, by God, I know I wouldn't have done. The paintings ripe with trifling trademark signifiers of mortality such as skulls, cadavers, ashtrays and sharks, floating aimlessly on midnight blue backgrounds mapped out with a mesh of perspective lines looked, to paraphrase the great Robert Hughes, like tacky secretions of an overzealous neophyte. The metaphors for these works seemed equally as gauche as their execution, but then Hirst was never really an artist but rather a vainglorious profiteer who made his name turning marinated bovine in to cash cow so I suppose I should have lowered my expectations a dash.

The show comes complete with a fully-paid-for gallery refurbishment including silk drapes commissioned from Marie Antoinette's preferred manufacturers at a cost that would leave most of us and our descendants in debt. For years artists died in penury usually syphilitic, earless, doped-up and without acclaim. Now, however, they are multi-millionaires, who employ people to mass produce their art in factory workshops before putting it up for sale at Saatchi...but whatever, this is progress I guess.

Personally, I never understood, nor saw, shock value in any one of Hirst's attempts. I mean the Pre-Raphelites had it, the Modernists had it, even Picasso had it in his own way, Hirst, however, like the rest of the very prolifically pointless Brit Art brat pack never had the capacity to shock simply because he has never conceived an original idea in his life. All the debris he has ever produced, in an attempt to test the parameters of decency and good taste, is a result of shameless appropriation and thereby founded on regurgitations of something someone else had done years ago. Thus regardless of how Hirst fashions his latest collection the paintings lack substance, appear irresolute, unassertive and cautious suggesting uncertainty on the painter's behalf. Stylistically they've been compared to Francis Bacon, which is of course absurd. These optical monstrosities have not a dash of virtuosity, in fact Hirst's botched attacks on canvas are outside the range of mediocrity; they are inexpertly derivative, their execution's poor, they're awkward and monotonous and view like turgid doodles of an anxious first year arts and crafts student.

The exhibition next door to the Wallace Collection's rooms of Old Masters such as Titian, Rembrandt, Poussin, Fragonard, and Gainsbourgh was chosen, I expect, to elevate the importance of Hirst's solo project. And in a sly underhand dig at his contemporaries Hirst explained his choice of location, by claiming: 'you get a bit bored of modern art galleries', yet I feel he had more grandiose motives than that, namely glaring self-delusion in a fit of which he made himself believe he's worthy in the great tradition, among the Masters which is,of course, yet another fallacy. Similar to the one which wants us convinced that Hirst is in some way a protege of Bacon...hilarious methinks... But never mind the fetor of mendacity Damien take heed of this and, please, give up the day job: 'Drowning is not so pitiful as the attempt to rise,' and furthermore, 'You're dead son, get yourself buried.'

Oh and CUNT.

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I think I dreamt this last night...

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 07:44:15 +0200

Promenading along Portobello Road we stop by a stall packed with archaic gewgaw. Scrutinizing the rubble, I say to my better: 'These fossils look man-made to me.'
The corpulent termagant behind the stall looks at me bemused and informs me that her husband is an archaeologist. 'Yeah, I say,and my husband is a great big official in the government, ready and willing to knock out all those pretty front teeth of yours.'

Just a touch of evil...

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Someone said...

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 19:28:43 +0200

How do you like your eggs in the morning? Unfertilised?

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Blowing in the wind

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 18:48:14 +0200

Shielding myself from the acid drizzle with the Metro whilst running down Berwick Street I spotted a headline above my bonce which read: 'Grandpa Stalin wasn't a killer'. Oh interesting, I though, and stopped under some fortuitous scaffolding to read on. Apparently, Stalin's grandson, a decrepit money hungry nonagenarian, has launched a legal battle against Novaya Gazeta claiming it had libelled old Josef. Imagine that...30 million dead and the man's not a killer...How many lives must a man take, before you call him a killer? The answer my friends, is blowing in the wind etc etc.

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Seminal Photo Of The Day

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 07:44:54 +0200

I'm a florist by trade, the nosegay's for your funeral.

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House bloody wifery

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 20:11:44 +0200

Sitting anxiously on a discomodious polypropylene chair and perusing one of those consummately fascist-fashion magazines, to pass the hour, while awaiting to be called in for my 6:45 appointment, I snarled and fawned at numerous depictions of women lacking any vestige of verisimilitude whatsoever. And while normally I would steer clear of such publications I had little inclination to leaf through Heating & Plumbing Monthly which was the only other option in the rack. And so I flicked from page to page until my eye snagged on the following tag line: How Can You Make Him Get Married?'

Now, is it just me or does that sound so wrong that even mail-order nuptials, contemptible and contrived as they are, seem relatively acceptable in comparison? The article suggested entrapment by cajoling was by far the best course of action while psycho (therapist) Philip Pulman (whoever he is) asserted that 'a little cunning doesn't go amiss' before adding that 'flattery' works wonders with men as they are nothing more than 'praise-seeking missiles.' Sooooo rub the missile up the right way and you might get a Mariachi band, a four-tear wedding cake and a boot up the aisle? Is this right? It just might be, at least the latter part.

I feel so out of touch with the female niche of the market that I didn't even realise such features still featured in modern day magazines. How naive. The three page spread began with a protracted introduction which entailed such jisms as this: ' Bullying, bribery and coercion might work in the short term...persuasion, however, might just tip the balance - especially if you're prepared to stretch the truth and make your point so subtly so that your partner thinks it was his idea in the first place.' No wonder one in four marriages ends in divorce. The article went on: 'Some of the best lessons in manipulation are taught by those in advertising,' and avidly encouraged women to try and 'persuade' their partners by 'using one or more of the of the following five approaches':

Reciprocation - do something nice and he will feel duty-bound to do something nice in return. (?)
Commitment and Consistency - get him to make a decision and he will stick to it so not to appear weak. (?)
Social Proof - show him everyone else is doing it thus he will feel inclined to follow the herd. (?)
Authority - be firm, convince him it's the right thing. (?)
Scarcity - show him that what's on offer is in short supply, and that there's plenty of fish in the sea. (?)

The mantra that followed read thus: 'Practice them! It might seem cold and calculating - but remember that all is fair in love and war.' So basically, the whole idea of romance, which is shoved down our every orifice each February, is not only a corporate capitalistic enterprise courtesy of Hallmark, Cadbury's and florists nationwide but also an utterly redundant concept. I knew that God was dead, but I didn't realise that romance was too. While reading the article I remembered the following lines by Bukowski: 'there's no chance at all: we are all trapped by a singular fate. nobody ever finds the one.' And maybe he was right, but surely the point and the fun and the romance is in the trying? Coaxing someone in to something, anything, especially in to an institution, with vulpine tactics and artifice is abominable but also rather pointless in the long term. Or is it? According to the magazine you can even force your other-half in to having children if you adhere to the above principles. I sat there perturbed and bewildered and realised for the first time why Freud, like almost every other man, couldn't understand women because as a woman myself I do not understand them either. To end, a rather fitting quote by the one and only Mr Beckett: 'Women are all the same, bloody same, you can't love, you can't stay the course, the only feeling you can stand is being felt, you can't love for five minutes without wanting it abolished in brats and house bloody wifery.'

Here, here.

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Seminal Photo Of The Day

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 07:10:01 +0200

Yeah okay, but can you do this?!

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Seminal Photo Of The Day

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 19:10:20 +0200

34 BB I presume?

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Turner at Tate

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 18:56:23 +0200

I do like a bit of art now and then, and today seemed like the perfect day for meandering around Tate Britain. Albeit, I'm not a huge fan of Turner and only like a select few of the old masters, I though it worth seeing nevertheless. The exhibition dubbed 'magnificient' by The Times, and reviewed by almost every national rag in the land with the likes of The Daily Telegraph naming Turner as 'one of the greatest painters of all time,' was unremarkable in every aspect. His works - most of them indistinguishable on the verge of identical - are pastiches of elements purloined from the likes of Rembrandt, Claude Lorrain, Jacob van Ruisdael, Willem Van de Velde, Nicolas Poussin and Titian.

According to the national press this particular undertaking made Turner a 'virtuoso' painter 'who looked back as well as forwards'. I disagree, primarily because Turner didn't pay homage by imitating his idols he plagiarised them and that shows a lack of imagination and ingenuity on his part. Conversely, his technique was inimitably his own but his works hanging alongside the likes of Rembrandt and (even) Constable looked like nebulous pasquinades as opposed to bona fide works of a master painter.

Notoriously competitive with his contemporaries for the share of the pie he was very prolific and chose popular subject matter or whatever was considered a la mode at the time: Venetian cityscapes, Shakespearean parables, biblical scenes, mythologies and epichorial allegories all of which were pecuniary endeavours rather than artistic ones. So in essence we know little of Turner's true artistic nature, except for the fact that he absorbed a great deal from the old masters and thereby perfected his technique through ersatz and diligence.

Turner went trough many phases and was very capricious, experimenting with light, tincture, romanticism and emulation but all of his works are instantly recognisable by their glowing mists and beautified but otiose atmospheric emptiness. His works are immensely ambitious, as was Turner himself, but lack individuality which he borrowed from the masters he revered. In short, I personally think, that Turner was a man of potential rather than genius primarily because he never quite dared to paint what his heart desired preferring to emulate and unquestionably following the teachings of Sir Joshua Reynolds who deemed art to be a hierarchy with history painting at the top, followed by landscape, portraiture and genre. In turn, I found most of the exhibition repugnantly grandiose and uninspiring. However, I loved 'A Scene from the Apocalypse' by Francis Danby and 'Rough Sea' by Jacob Van Ruisdael. But above all, I just have to say that George Stubbs RULES!

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Seminal Photo Of The Day

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 08:27:21 +0200

'I've got the money, you got the fags?'

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Seminal Photo Of The Day

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 07:55:44 +0200

Anna Karina: 'I've got my eye on you, Luc.'
Jean-Luc Godard: 'And I've got my eye on that fella's ass, Anna'

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Seminal Fact Of The Day

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 07:35:37 +0200

Robert Frost was the world's first writer-in-residence, in the 1920's, at the Middlebury College in Vermont.

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Spotted

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 17:37:25 +0200

Dixons new slogan: 'The Last Place You Want To Go.'

Damn right!

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Meeting one of my heroes in Soho Square

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 07:39:12 +0200

Running up and down numerous stairs, I spot an opening in the grind and dash outside through the back door for a quick cigarette. I perch my perilbottom on an iron balustrade and surveying the passing crowd catch a glimpse of a bespeckled, wizened and familiar face thus leap forth with disconcerting alacrity as his name erupts from my esophagus. His sober countenance comes over with a smile. A brief discussion ensues about 'Above All Gods' and other literary milestones. We chat, smiling at one another, shake hands and part once I had lifted my maxilla up of the floor.

Meeting ones heroes is sometimes more rewarding than one could have ever anticipated.

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Peril and Risk Conversing #6

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 10:05:31 +0200

Miss Perilbottom: Oh my dear Mr Riskingham, I have found you a lady friend!

Mr Riskingham: Have you been looking in the mirror again?

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Miss Lonelyhearts for schizophrenics

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 11:06:14 +0200

The London Review of Books is a shitty, trifling scrap-rag consisting of ill-considered one-dimensional appraisals of contemporary best-sellers written by senile pseudo intellectuals and superannuated garreteers. However at the very back of this hebetate publication is a page called 'Classifieds' where one can post a personal ad in hope of finding someone doltish enough to reply to it. Here are some of the aforementioned for your amusement.

I rule the reader comments section on my blog with an iron fist. In the bedroom I allow my sensitive nature to come out. Between these two versions of the same reality, you'll find perfection manifested in the form of a 46 year old gay male podiatrist and freelance juggler.

I have a dream. And that dream is to try on every pair of shoes in the world. That's where you come in: brusque, butch, fem cobbler to 55 with expansive collection of animal skins and a strap-on. Man, 76.

Without my grandfather's contribution to agricultural reforms in 1912, this nation would currently have to import its turnips. While you think about that I shall remove my clothes. Man, 55.

This advert is so bitter that the paper supporting it will yellow and being to mulch within moments of your reading it's malevolently kerning. Each sentence has been diabolically parsed and set upon a sepulcher of 666gsm Hellspawn papyrus, which will collapse and entomb its author's sense of dignity, hope and joy. If however there should be a genuine kind-hearted lady to 31 out there whose hobbies do not include 'ripping of devoted still-beating hearts from the breasts of the jaded-in-waiting', then please write to 30-something M (likes Hawksmoor churches and crab rolls). Otherwise consign me to the compost crypt in your sulphurous garden of broken boughs and bladed grass.

Man 56. Impervious to the effects of pepper spray, as discovered at a recent London review bookshop subscriber evening. In my own dimension, this is not unusual, but here it pretty much makes me a superhero. WLTM easily impressed, unarmed woman of any age and any camber.

I cast a magic spell on you. And now you are reading this advert in a literary magazine that exists only in your mind. Soon you will fall in love with me. When we meet, the odour will not concern you. Mister Mesmer - amateur hypnotist, professional shrimp-farmer (M, 51). Also available for weddings and birthdays.

The sweet smell of apples in the orchard carried on the warm, gentle breeze. A hushed moan, the curtains swish softly. Slowly my breasts come in to focus. The goat bleats. The shackles tighten. And then the chanting starts again. Scary woman, 52, looking for a very specific type of 'perfect Sunday.'

In the dive bar of the forsaken, I am a workhorse whiskey and every woman I have ever fallen in love with has been a surprise Britvic mini. After eight years of being down with cheap larger we were briefly united, but alas, you'd settled. It brings a tear to my eye and puts a lump in my throat. Also three shots of tequila, a slice of lemon, half a cruet set and a long bitter tirade involving endless misquoting of the 'Whitsun Weddings' addressed to a skipping juke box over which I stand sentinel. Two thirds empty half cut literary barfly (M, 72) seeks a better bottling up rota from Love's bartenders. No gingers of bitter lemons.

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Seminal Fact Of The Day

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 12:47:26 +0200

Henry Miller kept a print of the Neuschwanstein castle, built by the mad Ludwig of Bavaria, on his bathroom wall.

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Short Story Part 3

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 16:34:54 +0200

A big-eyed freckled woman inspects my disheveled condition, and after a quick intense contemplation, her eyes searching, she births a disgruntled resounding: 'Yes'. I want to tell her I once led a decent, respectable middle-class life and in it I was someone else altogether, but instead I hand over a carelessly crumpled up ten pound note which she examines suspiciously – holding it up to the light, testing it between her fingers, and scanning it at an angle – and tell her I wish to buy a ticket for the Antonini double-bill. I steal in to the theater, which looks like a cage perspicuous from all sides, and wedge-forth through the stalls – apologising intermittently – towards the only empty seat in the vicinity. Next to me is a soft pudgy woman in her mid-sixties; a grim struggle ensues for the armrest between our seats; my victory is in the seventieth minute when, overcome by hunger, she reaches for the peanuts. The first movie is a minor carnival. I'm sure the other cinema goers understand little of its problematics, but then they aren't looking for a lesson in history. They join in the performance with loud comments and have a marvelous time. When one of the leading figures challenges the monastery-school students to a discussion and the students remain obstinately silent the reply comes from the audience: 'There's not point in religion, none at all!' a bass voice calls out from the front row, and everyone laughs. Another loud comment is addressed to a bigoted female character. 'Oh cut it out! I bet you'd like a good fuck with the priest!' someone calls out, and it sounds like kindly advice. 'No, not her!' replies a voice from another row, and: ' Sure! Sure!' others call out vehemently. 'For Chrissakes' says the bass upfront, 'that broad?' and a reply shoots back: 'Sure, that broad!' It's all good fun among the peanut-crunching experts but I think the film a total failure.

A gray and clammy light comes on while the audience awaits with expectant readiness for the second movie to start. Apart from creaking chairs and subdued coughing the theater remains completely silent until the last beam of light starts whirring and endless rows of pus-eroded sexual organs invade the screen. Then all the other parts of the body appear, all encrusted and eroded with pus as if the film-maker wanted to give a complete survey of everything in the human body that could be putrefied; eyes, finger joints, breasts, groins, upper lips, lower lips, corners of the mouth, gums, jaws, tongues. I've never see such perfect anti-porn; like some phantasmagorical orgy of absurdity, bulldozing all thinking, feeling and wanting of sex. I expect all the daytime whores lying in wait for their johns, expecting eager hungry men, will be out of luck. I wonder whether they could sue for loss of business...probably not.

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Short Story Part 2

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 12:18:38 +0200

Next morning I wake alone - all blurred and drowsy and morbidly drugged - my face to the window. Next door the radio is bellowing one lovesick serenade after another. I gaze out on to a narrow lane, and across the way, outside four second-floor windows, I watch several human torsos gliding slowly against morning light. On the carpet, a remnant of a crushed cockroach, I have a nagging suspicion I stepped on it with my bare feet. The wallpaper curling at the edges, looks to come unstuck any minute. Discarded styrofoam cups, prescription-bottles, jangling clusters of coins, a dead cockroach and, in a mess of underwear littler, a single ossified sock constitutes the decor; to add to which the curtain railing plunges to the floor as I enter the bathroom. The racket makes my face twitch with neuralgia. I reach for a vial of capsules and sink several, banded with purple, to the pit of my stomach before immersing myself in water and going down for breakfast. As I enter the depressingly bright lobby, commotion: the red telephone rings incessantly, the fat bellboy and the lady at the foreign-exchange desk are chasing some gypsy children through the revolving door. Even the gentle, wizened woman at the reception seems indignant: 'They've got some nerve coming in here!' I'm tempted to enquire about the radio she promised, but haven't the courage. I drag my feet to the breakfast room and take a table next to the one occupied by an elderly, liverish-looking gentleman wearing a tight-fitting jacket and a brown velvet cap. His body looks pinched, no rather more compressed, his left shoulder in to his right breast and his right shoulder into his left, with his left shoulder slightly lower than the right. He gives a pained smile in my direction and recommends the onion soup, which he reckons the kitchen makes fresh every Sunday. I tell him about the gypsy children being driven out of the lobby, his face hardens. He warns me to guard against false romanticism.

The bastard waiter – with a caterpillar moustache – pays no heed to my half-hearted wave. He walks busily up and down rubbing his hands, in his eyes a yellow light as he surveys the breakfast crowd. Smoke pours out of the kitchen. Two plump little girls talk in whispers and giggle when suddenly a spot of grease on the old man's bowl afflicts me with nausea. I shield my mouth with the hollow of my palm and scuttle, through the lobby, abandoning all vestments of social politeness. The nausea subsides once outside, in the autumn air. Beyond rooftops among swarms of crows, myriads of brown whithered leaves, like miniature kites, dive through the air. A young gypsy girl strolls along holding a little whip with two strands, at the end of each dangles a silver ball the size of a walnut. The two balls click as they collide, at first irregularly, lost in the noise all around, then suddenly in a very fast, staccato rattle like a machine gun, and the crows scatter clamorously from the tops of the chestnut trees. I divert my curiosity towards two cats, one of them almost geometrically black with white trapezes running spirally to it's neck; the other pure white with a black nose and a black muzzle, both black spots forming perfect black circles. I follow them like an abactor through long, narrow, streets, intersecting at right angles. The neo-baroque tenements, all six stories high with no inner courtyards, look uninhabited. We pass countless tobacco shops; grocery stores; stationary suppliers; several hairdressers and a second hand book shop with vast quantities of dog-eared novels and dime paperbacks proudly propped-up on little pedestals. Directly on the window-glass, attached with sticky tape, hangs a large pictogram deploring the effects of drugs – all the paraphernalia and substances depicted with uncanny accuracy. The sight of discarded hypos brings back the divine ordeal of shooting up poison and toking on joints. My stomach churns like a conveyor belt. I try to spurt my guts out on to the pavement, the wrenching spasms throng through my entrails and emerge in streamers of spatter. Excess saliva wiped off, on the sleeve of my coat, I crawl across the street to the cinema theater and stagger through the doors towards the box-office.

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Short Story Part 1

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 11:16:01 +0200

I hit the mattress like a corpse. Another body collapses nearby. We dwell in perfect silence, almost not breathing. The poison juices gush along the blues of my limbs anesthetizing each one as they go. It's better to surrender to the euphoric affliction than fight the sensory fever. I lay enveloped in temporary blindness, but keep my eyes open. Eventually, they grow accustomed to the dark and the black interior erupts in to shades of spilled ale. The half-raised shutters slant toward the windowsill like a fan. The sky is a vault of iron over solid ground. Little clouds drift by, milky-black and plump. Tame dragons snort in their harnesses as Astraeous walks invisibly with a weightless tread, leaving a trail of yellow-sulphur flames in his wake.

'Look' I whisper, attempting to lift a finger.

The purveyor of poison doesn't react. We do not engage in conversation, but instead lay motionless in a rapture of dizzying silence. I fall in to shallow sleep until he clambers on top of me and thrusts himself inside, panting like a corybantic old dog. The sweat of his virile mass shifts unsteadily, backwards and forwards while I lay in a crush of arterial blues and stale sweat, waiting for his passion and his jizm to be spent. Prodding me with ductile in-and-out jerks, the purveyor bursts out: 'You fucking bitch, you fucking whore!' His yell turns in to a song, which he sings to the rhythm of fucking, interspersing the chorus with comical, arcane verses and jumbled words, until the climax. 'I've come! I've came!' He roars, with the thrill of a lottery winner, and slowly props himself up when, like a spring, my right foot leaps forward and meets with his ribs. He tumbles to the floor, shits a groan; doesn't get up, but wipes his cock with a puce sock, before falling asleep. I stare at the looming clock; the hand does not glide, it hops from minute to minute, and so conscientiously that its movements seem profoundly soothing. Midnight comes on the dot and sleep like a violent blow on the head.