Every afternoon, before homework

Walking straight into an Autumn setting sun clicked sense memory into action and suddenly I was eleven years old trotting a straight and terrifying line from one end of the arena to the other on a patient little shaggy pony. The sensation of my own footsteps gave way to the jarring little tap taps of a beginner rider learning to feel the rolling rhythmic power contained even within a patient little shaggy pony, whose tiny hoofbeats sounded like thunder in my terrified ears.

Unexpected difficulty typing a word has no correlation on the emotional front

Helplessness is a difficult word to type. So much hovering over 's', 'l's where you don't expect them to be and the sound in your head is quick, so slippery that fingers have trouble tapping the right double rhythm. Helplessness. But that's not what I want to talk about.

There have been dreams that follow me through consciousness, close as a cat, changing the tone of whole days, changing the angle of my hand as I stir sugar through an otherwise bitter coffee. This time being unemployed is not my fault. The corporate opressor moved operations offshore leaving me in unexpected freedom and there are no bars on my cage. Each morning I stir from dream into action, rising even as the others are still readying themselves to breach the warmth of The Peach dressed in workplace disguise. I can return to bed, hot coffee in hand, cat at my heels, and sift through possibilities with determination. It is always a relief when helplessness is merely a word to type and not a thing to feel.

SLAMMATOWN - This old peacock world

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. 

First published on RHUM...

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.

Pancake Mozart surprises self with super glue in hair

It occurred to me this morning, half way through supergluing a ceramic toast rack back together, that the life a retired and not too elderly gentleman would suit me enormously. Before 9am this morning I had eaten breakfast at the kitchen table whilst listening to classical fm, had one and a half cups of tea, read two chapters of a natural history book about earth winds and decided I was very happy indeed.

There might be something significantly wonderful about purposeful pottering interspersed with civilised activities such as sitting at the table to have a cup of tea. It has been a long time since I was civilised enough to eat breakfast, with a knife and fork, sitting at the table. I usually forage for food in the cupboard or fridge and eat it walking down the hallway, or standing at the kitchen sink staring idly into the middle distance.

I was going to light a fire in the library and work at my manuscript in there for the rest of the morning, with a tray for tea, until I remembered that I have run out of firewood and the work table in the library was replaced by a drum kit some time ago. This was the first clue that my life was not as lovely as the early morning made me believe.

Shortly after remembering about the firewood I discovered an alarming amount of super glue in my hair. It occurred to me that I had other more boring things to pursue than making notes on earth winds for my manuscript such as preparing for a job interview on Monday, pushing PAN issue 2 to print, cleaning out the cat litter box and applying for more jobs so as not to rely to much on Monday's interview. Boring. Not only boring but nothing like the orderly life of a retired gentleman, or retired colonel, or retired sea captain. Nothing like it at all.

At least I have the memory of two unsullied hours of what life might be like, sunlit and calm with clear acres set out sparse and free for ordering ideas, objects and music upon for no other purpose than just for me.

Flying solo cheese, one mystery key and evil soup of almost ultimate doom

The cheese flew across the aisle at high speed and smacked into the floor. Nothing too unusual about high speed cheese except that there wasn't anyone else in the supermarket aisle. The cheese was flying solo.

In other unusual events I found a key in my PO Box in an unaddressed envelope, the key is wrapped in a piece of paper with '1727' written on it. It is a mystery key.

As for the soup, I don't want to talk about it.

Translucent and a saturated yellow

I found a yellow plastic toothbrush in the depths of my least favourite armchair. My brother telephoned this morning to ask if he had left his keys at The Peach last night.  He bade me look for them and I obliged unwillingly. Removing the seat cushion from the armchair and plunging my hand into three decades of crumbs, coins, dead things and anonymous detritus was not one of the things I had thought to do today, before I was halfway through my first cup of coffee.

The Thursday before Easter I was somewhere in Spencer’s house when I thought ‘this is the closest thing you can experience to plunging your hand into a sack of grain, when you live in the city’. Spencer was not in the room at the time. I do not recall which room, which level of the house, whether inside or out. Since that night I have been trying to remember what that ‘thing you can do’ is. It is not plunging your hand into the depths of a least favourite armchair that is in every way identical to the other armchair, except in rank of favour. Spencer’s house contains no large jars of buttons, no small sacks of slipping particles cool and willing to part for the casual plunging of flesh. It has become my second most recent mystery.

The yellow plastic toothbrush is problematic. I have never seen it before, I can not attach its ownership to any known face. It is impossible that is owned by the cat, who also favours the other chair. The handle of the toothbrush is translucent. The bristles a usual kind of white. The yellow is heavy, saturated, unpleasantly reminiscent of the first passing of water after a night spent drinking gin. The ability to pass water was one of my first and earliest mysteries, since solved by the clockwork power of science.

I left the toothbrush in the chair, not back in the depths but underneath the seat cushion. It seems important that it not be entirely removed from its chosen home but left almost where it was, where I can lift the cushion and observe its journey through time.