Wednesday 17 October 2012


CORDONS


for a short amount of time, it might be the succession of just a few seconds, or a few seconds in no succession at all, shards of time spread out over an inarticulate plain, banana peels slipping in and out of slapstick contexts, hot oil leaping out of a frying pan to turn your neck into a writhing miracle, - you know what i mean - what i am talking about; all the tiny jolts that lets you know you are about to be possessed by an other, or letting you know that an other is about to possess you. you find yourself somewhere in the kitchen, working hard to resist the impulse of calling it god. resisting the urge to further abstract the already abstract, and please don't mind me writing that you would say it like this: 

          "he was extrapolating dearly on something quite singular"

the already unfathomable chasm of nothingness smiles back at your pretense to plaster a smile upon its nothingness. now, and here it shows; the puny hand of an entity completely devoid of being bodily succinct, touching you to let you know that it is not fully out of reach, that there is an element of warmth that can yet be perceived. you are touched by embers, and wanting to remember, you name the embers and insert your experience of the glow on a neat scale. you say:

          "this is happening now"

when in fact you know that it is more likely that it never happened/ or will never happen at all. you say:

          "i can feel the body of christ"

when in fact you know that it is more likely that there doesn't exist/ will never be a transcaction of intimacy at all. you are sitting alone in the kitchen. rather; you are standing alone in the kitchen, pondering how a multitude of artefacts could come together to perform a dull symphony. you want me to write:

          "it will be as if nothing ever happened"

but we both wish to avoid lying. soon you will be fed, and the notion of otherness will gradually leave your body and give way to a particular sense of loss. your belly will remind you of your mother, and for a while, not long, you will attribute all unplanned occurences to an overwhelming sensation of nostalgia. the kind of melancholy that makes you pick up a phone, dial a number you know by heart and then hang up just after the first ring. but it is not true. something did not not-happen; you went into a room to pick something up. you forgot what it was you wanted to pick up. you stood in a room trying to trace the inner workings of your desires. you wanted me to write:

          "time went by in an unsolicited manner"

instead i listened, as you grew silent with expectance, and wrote:

          "he went back into the kitchen, thinking that nothing had happened. a cigarette. he looked at the phone. it seemed brand new. the frying pan was left unused"

then the phone rang, and none of us answered. 

Wednesday 10 October 2012






"At times it really does seem to me as if the whole of society were still in the Cairo opera house to celebrate the inexorable advance of Progress. Christmas Eve, 1871. For the first time the strains of the Aida overture are heard. With every bar, the incline of the stalls become a fraction steeper. The first ship glides through the Suez Canal. On the bridge stands a motionless figure in the white uniform of an admiral, observing the desert through a telescope. You will see the forests again, is Amanoroso's promise. Did you also know that in Scipio's day it was still possible to travel from Egypt to Morocco under the shade of trees? The shade of trees! And now, fire breaks out in the opera house. A crackling conflagration. With a crash the seats in the stalls, together with all their occupants, vanish into the orchestra pit. Through the swathes of smoke beneath the ceiling an unfamiliar figure comes floating down. Di morte l'angelo a noi s'appressa."

                                           - W.G.Sebald, from Vertigo (cheers Neil)

Tuesday 9 October 2012



"Mummy, will there be shopping centers in heaven?"

"No love, of course not. Although, heaven being the first rate gated community that heaven is, there will be a wide selection of high end boutiques and parlors." 


pay close attention, this message will only be broadcasted once:

saps of the world, unite. your number is up, and believe me, you will be left at the departure gates, while the chosen ones head off to new worlds of menial splendor. do not, i repeat, do not let this be your chosen moment to rise up, in some moment of gravely mis-forged valor, and do nothing. there is no creed for you to answer to in this way, do not take action yet. have faith.
there is a higher calling you have yet to answer to, and we will be needing every single of you,
every last nitwit of the world, to rise up together and do something, to act and give yourself up for a cause. the time is nigh, just be ready, it is all we ask.

end of broadcast.

a glimmer of hope, but for whom? what colorless and anemic entity could possibly hearken to this unwarranted calling? what gutless gathering of sad sycophants could find hope, and better yet; purpose, in such a decree? what vile and corruptible being or beings would want to unify with such a prosaic personnage of pinheads? to what end? what purpose can it serve to congregate such a jumbled body of blubberheads to beligerently battle the inevitable coming of their butterscotched destinies?

it's normally so tidy in here.

in my mind i spell the word "panasonic" three times over. the tape recorder sits on the table, devoid of audible activity. before i can either force it or stop it, like it was always there to be uttered, i think, i formulate the question:

why did it begin?