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| Illustration by Onnie Cleary |
There are days when keeping a heart beating takes more energy than it’s worth and on logical reflection the notion of carrying on is at best a farce. This Sunday people knelt and prayed for the magic Jew they nailed to wood, felt love, hope and gratitude in their hard little hearts. I sat at home eating chocolate and snivelling, wondering whether drinking seven coffees in a row would push the boundaries of my beating heart so fast that it would suddenly stop. Death by coffee in my favourite cup.
Some people wear sorrow with grace. Wave their wan little fingers at translucent tears on porcelain skin, sit elegantly folded under blankets with gin. I hate those people so I walk. Train tracks, highways, back lanes, anywhere I hope the world isn’t but like I said the world is a peacock and I’m no better than a hen.
There is unfortunate magnificence in the minute, the overblown, the absent, the present, the two severed fingers on the railway tracks. That was some trick the train played, taking for itself a sample of the things that made it, the two things who first took up a pencil and dreamt it into shape.
I had an abhorrent conversation the other night while a self-confessed manipulative liar poured wine after wine and I discovered what it was like to go glass for glass with someone accustomed to becoming drunk. He was helping because I had asked him to help. He was talking about ways to make it work. Ways in which to wake up and go willingly into harness every nine to five, and then again, and then again and then again, to earn money.
There are more than two kinds of people but today only two of them count. Those who can, and those who rejoice because they can’t. Two sets of shoes a person can walk in but the catch is in the choosing. Most people don’t stand back and make the choice, most people don’t sit down and write lists to see if living is worth it, not that I’m aware of.
Now because you reading this and some of you have soft little souls I’ll tell you this. I’m only taking today, just this one day, to sit down and moan like I mean it. I’ll spend the day cat-curled and rattled. I’ll spend this whole day asking what shall become of me but tomorrow I’ll probably get up and walk. I’ll probably go visit those severed fingers and wonder else they dreamed of.
This will be the last SLAMMATOWN for a little while. The editor at RHUM has been kind enough to let me take a little break.
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