a congregation of wolves.

Under construction: sample.

Fri, 20 Jul 2012 20:48:00 +0200

Now V could stand for anything. Victory? Five? Five victories? But in this case it feels a lot more like vanquished. Verbose and bloodied I laid on the floor of some cell. For… I don’t know how long. Hours? Minutes? I opened my eyes. Ish. But the swelling had already set in and the haze presented me made me want to spew. But I didn’t. Not yet. It was all rather quite sanguine. My mouth, in profile, laid open, a slight. I remember coughing rather quite a lot. Too much really. I closed my eyes and plotted the room in my pineal. The door against which I laid opening on to two walls running away from each other until stumbling against a far wall which closed off the triangle. The walls an off white, the floor hard. Running my fingers across it I found it gravely cold. Meeting the door, warmer, smooth. My fingers running up and down the layers of cracked paint that built and dropped incrementally like ages in the stratified terrasphere. Meeting the wall my finger tips slipped on the gloss and fell back behind me. Shackled alone, I heard nothing of the other side of the door. My solitude had been broken just once since my maligners had tired of kicking me. When black shoe stepped abreast my huffing chest and slanged away to his heart’s content. I was still none the wiser as to what precisely was going on, but felt I’d inadvertently accepted an invitation in to the lion’s maw. When black shoes spoke, light glinting off his well dubbed and polished toe caps, the words escaping me, the cadence hit me. Or more, it lacked one. A cadence that is. It was more akin to typing words in to a digitized vocal synthesizer. It implied a further lack. Something emotional. But I wasn’t sure of what yet. The word indignado had again cropped up, it haunted me. An illness contracted through ignorance. I knew nothing but that this academy of whatever were none too plussed as regards my blog. It was then I realized it must’ve gone viral and delighted, I reached my hands out to fetch the laptop from the coffee table. But I soon realized, with a sharp jolt about my neck and so on, I wasn’t in my usual lazing spot in the living room, but on the gravely cold floor of a triangle cell. I resigned myself to starvation, after attempting self-snuffing by holding my breath, but finding I could only count to 20. It was hours after that I spent slowly lulling myself to death that I was disturbed somewhat by a tinker, tinkle and then a nominally large explosion.

Livid, as you can imagine, I braved the haze and opened my eyes shouting, YOU BLOODY FOOL CAN YOU NOT LET A MAN DIE IN BLOODY PEACE! And there, on the short side and somewhat rotund stood Napoleon. S. Jose Napoleon, to be exact. My saviour. As saviours go he wasn’t noticeably concerned as regards my safety and, grabbing me by the shackles, dragged me through the rubble and I was rather quite impolitely bundled in to the back of a waiting van. Thanks! I thought. Thanks a bunch, as I bounced about the walls and ceiling of the van, cushioning the moments at which my bones and the metal intersected invariably with my face. It was a long drive back to A Coruna and I had only just about enough sense left to, upon arrival, read the sign above the door I was quickly ushered through. It read:

DETECTIVES NAPOLEON

INVESTIGACIONES VIGILANCIOS

I was placed face down on the floor and left alone for some time. I wondered what the bloody hell was going on. I wanted answers, and these damned shackles off. I had needed to itch my nose for what felt like years. I made do by wiping my face against the carpet, which can be best described as constituted of tiles of woven wire. It didn’t suffice and I breathed a sigh of relief when Napoleon returned with cutters. Freed I helped myself to a chair and sat and itched my nose while he spent an inordinate amount of time rounding the oversized table which dominated the room. My eyes were little better and I could just pick out the red of blood where my hands had touched against the wood of the chair and floor.

You messed with the wrong people, señor. [I correct his speech for both our benefits]

What¡¡

Exactly. They don’t take too kindly to change round here, you should know that.

A bewildering silence ensued before I realized my nose itching had turned to nose picking quite inadvertently and I quickly returned my hand to my side, depositing of the results on the underside of the seat.

What do you mean people? What do you mean wrong? What do you mean here? [I attempted to look serious, suss him out with a tight frown, but as my sight returned slowly throughout the conversation I realized I had been frowning at a rhododendron on the bookshelf to Napoleon’s left the whole time]

What do you know of the International Indignado Brigades? [He leaned forward, I assume by the sound lighting a cigarette, or cocking a gun. Or perhaps utilizing one of the former with the aesthetic qualities of the latter]

Inter-who? Nada. Diddly-pip. Don’t know ‘em.

Well they know you, Hullcity_fan11. [I gasped at this stage] They know you well. As do the Academy, I believe you and they are well acquainted. [I gasped again and had to take a breather for a moment to regain inhalation normalcy]

Yes, we’ve had our moments. Today, as you know, I assume. You’re the one that ruined their lovely décor. And what exactly have they to do with me, other than gifting me the urgent need of a dentist.

You’ve, unfortunately, stumbled in to what until a week ago was a proxy war. Literally, played out on the proxy servers. The ii want freedom from centralized control. The Academy, as you might know, hold power over the entire Spanish language. It’s here the fight began, with The Academy shutting down facebooks, blogs, even Myspaces whose users communicate in text speak. Your blog has gone viral. And the ii has taken ¡¡ as its emblem of resistance. You’re a marked man, and Concepcion is out for your blood. I see he’s already bled you a fair bit.

Black shoes? He’s had his pound. What does he want with me?

To silence you, not to martyr you. Just, disappear you.

Right. [By this point I felt myself disintegrating, noting the growing pool of blood across the carpet, I could muster little else] And you are who?

Napoleon. The ii wanted you alive. You’re their mascot. Their figurehead. I was tasked with retrieving you, they’ll be here soon to claim you.

Well … all I can say to you is, fuck that.

I stood to leave, and it is unclear to me whether I feinted of slipped, but as you may have gleaned by this point, me and the floor are well acquainted and upon greeting it I sank quickly in to unconsciousness. Blowing bubbles in the morbid puddle creeping out around me.

we, the damned. the voyeur.

Tue, 08 May 2012 16:40:32 +0200

the voyeur.

He’s been sat there for hours. What is he doing? Same as always, nothing I imagine. I wonder what’s on the telly – ooh! He’s up! Wait, no, no, just a stretch. Maybe a yawn. I’d better take note: 22:04:57 – Sub. A leans backwards in chair. Pen leaves paper, no trace left behind. Leans back forward. Pen meets paper, no productivity achieved thus. I’ll place my notepad and pencil just so – as always – for best access should anything of worth occur. The carpet looks brownish in this light, I know better though. It’s a reddish colour I think. Or maybe more a rose. The bed is too small for two people. When they sleep, they lay practically on top of one another in order to keep from falling over the edge on to that brownish carpet. Reddish, sorry. Or maybe rose. The full moon is my ally. By it I see everything. The crescent is my nemesis, pulling the light from the air and leaving my task to the light lazily drifting from some object beyond my gaze. I imagine a lamp of some sort, maybe a candle. But I’ll bet its a lamp. A tall floor standing lamp. Wood carved petals flowing from a dainty base. Disappearing in to a large fabric shade. That’ll be why its so ineffective as a lighting instrument. Or maybe a candle for that matter. Half-moon even, isn’t particularly helpful. The knock of her feet on what I gather is the wall. A green wall maybe. The soft flow of pages she turns. AGAIN! Where is my notepad? Pencil?

22:07:34 – Sub. B turns page.

22:07:37 – Sub. B turns page.

22:07:40 – Sub B. turns page.

22:07:44 – Sub B. hesitates, turns page.

The rasp of his dry pen on barren paper. The languid turn of the ceiling fan blades, pushing the dark matter around. Not that I can see a ceiling fan from this angle, nor dark matter for that matter. I am twenty-five feet away, slightly to the left of their window from where I stand at mine. Two storeys higher. Or four lifts, in scaffolding terms. It allows for sound observation of the bed, the chair, the desk, a small L-shape of floor around the near side and end of the bed. The peripheries of the circumference of light my binoculars can fathom, but any further and visual detail is lost. My blind spots are the immediate floor at the foot of the window, the wall facing me in its entirety, anything beyond the bed – although on a clear sunny day it is possible to make out the shape of what is perhaps a drawer, or door, or wardrobe – the furthest one third of the desk, below it, and anything relatively far above it. The ceiling, the left hand wall, from where I stand, and the far wall. I can see enough of the right hand side wall in order to guess at its whole. All in all I am not too far off a mental facsimile. And my work in progress, my magnum opus, is nearing completion. My research will never be done, a facsimile is just that, it lacks detail. It needs detail. But my model is nearing completion. Years and years. I’ve built it up, and only several voids remain. And when they’re filled I will have dominion over all. I’ll be the master of all I purvey. I will be immortal. 22:10:38 – Sub B. turns page. All I see, here, from my window, will be mine. To grasp, caress, support, destroy. I will be god and – 22:11:27 – Sub B. turns page. - what was I saying again? Ah yes, I will be god and everything that exists in front of my window for me to see will be mine to love or hate at turns of my own whim. The figures, now barely fleshed skeletons of paper, will be whole, and will laugh and cry for my amusement. At my command. I will be them and they will be me, for my foot to crush or lips to kiss. I will be … everything.

The Voyeur stands stiff in the window. A tall wooden stool, worn, where he repeatedly places and picks up a notepad and pencil. The room he stands in is starkly lit, with no corner obscured. As much as a corridor may be labelled a room, that is. From the light bulb hanging naked in the centre of the ceiling it is possible to denote a doorway, closed, in the wall opposite the window where the Voyeur stands. Next to the door around chest height is a white plastic square attached to the wall with three screws although there are holes for four. The lug heads are hollowed out from use and are therefore lodged for posterity’s measure. The white square harbours a switch presumably for operation of the light. Equidistant between the door and window is a low brown sofa, old yet immaculate. Opposite the sofa and centrally positioned is a television of black plastic. The floor is bare concrete. The four walls and ceiling are bare concrete. The one blind spot from the position of the filament is directly above the bulb, where it must be assumed the wire escapes through a hole in the ceiling. Observed from behind, the Voyeur is dressed in a ratty old jumper and sweat pressed corduroy trousers. His feet are bare. His hair thinning, a puff of white smoke about his skull. His arms are raised to his face holding a black object he rarely removes, at such intervals it becomes apparent it is a pair of pleather bound binoculars. Beyond the pane the night sops with water. Spreading in tides across the glass. Anything past that is obscured by streams of smog rising from cars bleating six storeys below, that is twelve lifts, in scaffolding terms, and the contrast of light to dark on either side of the window. The Voyeur leans in to the cold, pressing his body up against it to peer on through the elements.

Behind him the television softly blares, muzzled by the marching feet of crusading pleurisy. Pleut. Rain, sorry. The woman on the screen is starched and bleached, ranting on about this and that, trying to sell the viewer something useless. The news then stops for an advertising break and the lectures become more interesting. Relevant. Minutes pass, unmoving, other than the repetitive flash of colours thrown from the television. When starched and bleached returns to the screen, discussing some point of interest or other, the Voyeur reaches panicking for his notepad, pencil and the information merges as one in the maelstrom between his ears.

MINE MAN TRAPPED – WILL HE ESCAPE?

22:56:17 – Sub A. rises.

DUN DA DUN DUN DUN DA DUN DUN DUN DUN

22:56:24 – Sub A. now on bed. Sub B. laid on back. Magazine has slipped from vision.

AFTER SEVEN HOURS THE SEARCH FOR M. MINOR HAS BECOME FRAUGHT

22:56:30 – Sub A. atop Sub. B. Seem to be committing some sacral dance. Murder?

CREWS TOIL ON ENDLESSLY IN TO THE NIGHT, THE DARKNESS UPON US HERE AT THE MINE MOUTH NOT A FRACTION OF BLACKNESS IN WHICH HE CURRENTLY LANGUISHES

22:56:56 -Sub A. gazing at wall above bed. Sub B. gazing through window. Still embraced. Moving erratically.

THE MOUTH IS COLLAPSED. THE TUNNEL CUT OFF

22:57:24 – erratic movements continue. Sub B. unblinking.

IS THIS THE END FOR THE PEOPLE’S PITIED? IS IT OVER QUITE YET

22:57:52 – Sub A. disengaged. Moved to desk. Sub. B laid on stomach. Flicking pages of magazine.

IT IS NOT YET FOR US TO KNOW. ALL WE CAN DO HERE AT THE MOUTH IS DIG AND DIG DEEP AND HOPE TO FIND LIFE ON THE OTHER SIDE.

22:59:58 – Sub A. leans back. Yawn? Paper defaced. Now reads: ‘Time collapses. Linearity erodes, on the precipice where fact and fiction merge and parade under the banner of reality with a certain caprice. Here at this desk. I don’t know what time it is.’ Sub B. turns page.

The smog whips up tumult in the fathoms between the buildings. The rain, smoke and carbon dioxide fumes melt together to create a curtain through which no device may pierce. Somewhere in the dead space between walls scuffling is audible, akin to the pads of tiny feet. The Voyeur stays watching. Pushing the macula lutea. Deafening all in the push of the centralis. Looking for the subtle movements of shadow puppets. The television, the sofa, the walls, the feet dissolve. As the clouds envelop the moon and his ally is lost, his mind lingers on one purpose. His one purpose. And the walls build up brick by brick for him to one day smash down. And somewhere, close. Not too far off. A man sits blind in a cave of fossilised life.

we, the damned. the writer.

Tue, 08 May 2012 16:36:07 +0200

the writer.

Time collapses. Linearity erodes, on the precipice where fact and fiction merge and parade under the banner of reality with a certain caprice. Here at this desk. I don’t know what time it is. Wednesday? Monday through Sunday trundle on, and destroy one another as an ouroborous. I think its the tail end of the week. Or perhaps the head. In this room, here at this desk, the bland avarice of solubility jogs my memory too much. Too too much. Its on this precipice where time collapses. Its on this precipice where days collide.

At this desk. The grain is solid, running in lines from one end to another broken only by occasional eyelets and objects strewn apparently at random, however now as I picture it in my mind placed just so to imply carelessness. Or perhaps abstraction. There is a lamp, not akin to but a simulacrum of the one that I glanced in the window of 25b Cannon Street, London, WC1. It has a green cuboid shade with one face missing from which slightly protrudes a dull bulb. The wire trails from the back of the cuboid, winding around a brass stem to a weighty base before disappearing over the tip of the far end of the table and beyond. I witnessed the object some years prior, and only from three of its six sides - when seen as a complete object – and so it must be half assumed. If seen in its composite form I viewed only two fifths of its overall external area, tops, and from a distance, and so any wear, deformity, maker’s markings and so on are null in the instance of its reproduction here. It is reproduced lit, however was originally seen unplugged, and so the angles at which the generated light project must too merely be assumed. The light splays little to the sides, or up. And is thrown meekly down across the left half of the table from its sentinel position at the farthest left corner of the solid grain from where ‘I’ hovers. Its light stumbles where it meets the spine and placated pages of two books; the first two thirds of a sheet of paper; the nib of a pen; the very bottom of a cylindrical glass object; the edge of the table on two sides where it falls in to the comparative darkness of the wider room. The book spines are probably coloured in a dark shade, although the material of their binding and their pages are rendered in a greenish hue where the lamp casts tampered light and dead shadows beyond. Inscribed on the spine above is the word INTIMACY, on the other JOURNEY TO THE END OF- the last words are lost. Along the curvature of light three inches clockwise the paper is creased. Slightly. It is lined, in faint grey, or perhaps a dark blue. It has no preordained margin. Along the very top, situated roughly in the centre of the width are scrawled three words containing one use of punctuation. The view has been approached from the perspective of the lamp in this instance and so reads thus:

we, the damned [upside down, backwards]

Using implicit knowledge of the runes of the English language it is possible for the brain to visualise the shapes and render them in a decipherable state. Therefore the pattern reads:

we, the damned

Several lines below rests a pen nib. A metallic gold colour emanating from a small steel ball bearing smeared in dark blue/black ink. The same tone as the words scrawled atop the page. The metallic gold colour housing of the ball bearing backs on to a gold coloured cone of soft plastic before meeting with the beginning of a transparent plastic cylinder encasing a thin tube filled with ink of the aforementioned shade. Baring for the shadows now. Before the ink tube can run to clarity its outer stretch is obscured from observation by a thumb, index and middle finger that swaddle its circumference in such a way as to throttle it thoroughly. Delirium tremens or no the fingers shake just perceptibly, leaving small ink marks around the general area of where the nib meets the paper. The digits are members of a set of five attached to a hand, which in turn connects to a wrist, elbow, upper arm, shoulder, neck, chin, mouth, philtrum, nose, tear ducts, eyes, optic nerve, the visual cortex – taking the hyphen as a knife – through the pons to the pineal gland. Where can be found ‘I’. Nice to meet you. Out back through the eyes the rest of the body is swathed in darkness and must too be assumed. A hand which intermittently grasps at a glass with a cylindrical base, or that picks at the petals of a flower sat low in a glass vase of cylindrical proportions. Below in the darkness from where the table drops; legs, feet and toes sit still, mulling the tapping of a steel ball bearing on creased white paper.

A noise is audible behind ‘I’, a woman laid on a bed; over the covers. She flicks through a magazine of photographed faces in the blue light of a full moon rushing in over her torso, one third of the bed and covering three foot of carpet before falling short of the light and relief of the writer at his table. She wears little, laying stomach down. She kicks her feet against the headboard and flicks the pages with the rhythm of a pendulum. The sound is soft at first, slow, but as moments fleet and the blue of the moon moves across the room, retreating further from the writer to illuminate the woman fully, it grows in candour. A scratch, before a saw, a shout, a scream and then silence. Soon, I’ll have to give up gazing at this paper. I will think about the impotence of my pen and the willingness of my hand. On the bed where I and she will tessellate. With the first rip of clothing the words will finally flow to me. And I will look away from her contorted face and gaze at the darkened wall, and there it will hit me. Afterwards I will sit down at my desk, pen to paper. Write phrases to dissolve totality. Words to transgress utility, a piece of writing to subvert my boredom, with words something like: time collapses, days collide.

Photo

Tue, 08 May 2012 16:33:52 +0200

life: lived.

Tue, 08 May 2012 16:32:07 +0200

Who is it then? Do we know? Ah, you’ve gone. Way back. Fiddling about with that box of yours.

Well then. Who is it then? Do we know? I shouldn’t’ve worn a jacket. The statue, I don’t know. The bust? The man or the woman, the man I’d imagine, he’s higher up. Woman as decora- the white sheets red, midnight warm. Too warm. Hm, some might say. Too warm. Hm. Window should be opened, but it’s left cold. And the people linger as cadavers lurching here, over there. But the howling screams and screaming howls cut the air altogether. Too loud, some might say –tion. But who can tell. I can’t tell. Can you tell?

With every step he moves his eyes, I’ve seen it, Hey! Would you hurry up! This one’s alive! I’ve seen it! You’ll take your time. And the, what’s an artist’s mixing board? Where their oil paints are stored? What’s it called?- He takes the palette down again. Looks around the corner, not happy, frowns again. Deeper somehow. Scooping amber, is it amber? The beard is patchy, he should probably shave it. The girl is naked, she should probably shave it. Who has a chaise-longue in a room with no heater. Foolish –Wooden choc? That’ll do. I’m not arsed to think so far. Not too far. And what’s the woman doing? Petals? Rose petals? They’re mint green. Why would she be throwing mint?

With every step, I tell you. You can hear the grind of his brass chin on his brass neck. Maybe it’s the cars. Probably it’s the cars. Or maybe it’s her. Sans-culottes. Spreading flowers around the grave. Whose grave? His grave? Her grave? Maybe no one’s. Been here sometime. Long time. But all I ha- red dress white, afternoon cold. Not too cold. Autumn, probably. Autumn, definitely. We’ll see. Is it allowed to be Catholic? After the , y’know. She don’t tell, he don’t tell. The beard is full, he should probably shave it. A baby’s crying. Somewhere. Nowhere. Back of the room. The easel at their flat is full, canvas empty –ve is wandering. For today. Might change tomorrow. Hopefully. Honestly.

She’s not even wearing shoes, have you seen this? She’s not even… ! Madness. She must be frozen. I can’t see a name. Can you? Not hither, nor thither. Is it Degas, maybe. I said is it Degas? You’re not listening. Maybe round the- front of the tram rolls low along the road. He’d never’ve seen it coming. A moment prior a bird flew overhead. Wipes his coat, frowns again. He never saw it coming. Steps off, looking up, trundle on the pavers and up and off. People screaming. Somewhere. Nowhere. The account at the bank is full, the easel at their house is empty. Tram rolls on. He’d never’ve seen it coming -back. Uff, it’s getting cold now. I should have my jacket on. It’s not on the sides, maybe round the… what did you say? I wonder how they get the bodies down here. You’re off to Rome? We’ve only just got here! Home? Oh home. Yes, yes, well. Back’s a front of back and front all the same. Is it this way? Or maybe just the way is this.

Composition Commentaire

Ces photographies ont été réalisées à Paris, au cimetière Montmartre durant le mois de Septembre 2011 avec un appareil photo moyen format de la marque japonaise Fujifilm.
L’ensemble des éléments apparaissent dans un ton neutre. La couleur prédominante de ce diptyque est la couleur beige. La lumière est chaude.
Les sujets sont immobiles et centrés à l’intérieur du cadre.
Cependant, la statue, stoïque de par sa nature, semble synchroniser un mouvement avec le personnage vivant de la scène.

Composition Note

The photographs were taken in Paris, in Montmartre cemetery in September 2011. Taken in standard format Japanese Fujifilm.

All the elements are rendered in a neutral tone. The colouring is predominantly beige. The light is warm.

The subjects are stationary and centred in the frame.

Yet, the statue, stoic by nature, seems synchronised with the movement of the living narrator of the scene.

MA & WPS&B

(http://www.marieathenais.com/ && http://acongregationofwolves.tumblr.com/)

SIMULATION AND SIMULACRA serie B coming post-haste. Photographs...

Sun, 30 Oct 2011 18:23:47 +0100

SIMULATION AND SIMULACRA

serie B coming post-haste.

Photographs courtesy of sister wolf Athenais.

WPS&B

SHUTTER SPEED AND BROKEN GLASS. 4.

Sun, 30 Oct 2011 18:12:55 +0100

Chapter Four.

Republique.

January First, Two Thousand and Five After Death.

Thirty-Three minutes past Six Ante Meridian.

Manitou says: Sorry, do you have a lighter, please?

Brahman says: Er, yeah, sure… there. How’s your night been?

…

….

…..

end.

SHUTTER SPEED AND BROKEN GLASS. 3.

Sun, 30 Oct 2011 18:05:00 +0100

Chapter Three.

Oberkampf.

April Twelfth, Two Thousand and Seven After Death.

Fifteen minutes to Eight Post Meridian.

Narrator says: 4 Bd Voltaire. After months of deliberation, a three second flourish on the signature rendered the third floor apartment on the left here under the joint ownership of Brahman and Manitou. It is small. Cramped. The walls lean over you as if to crash down around you, a surf of bricks, to drag you out to sea. But the ceilings are high, and open up the environs, allow you to breathe.

The large room, street side, is for them. Brahman has already bought the blue pastel paint for the small room, courtyard looking, and a flat pack cot.

It’s not too soon, for all this… don’t you think? - Manitou had said.

- Nah, it’ll be perfect. It’s all perfect. perfect.

They laid back on the sofa, in each others arms, Manitou laid her hands on her stomach and looked along the walls, poised to crash. Perfect.

It will be three months, five days, ten hours and forty-seven minutes before, sitting in the doctor’s waiting room, they receive the news that it was is will, not.

SHUTTER SPEED AND BROKEN GLASS. 2.

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 18:32:32 +0200

Chapter Two.

Filles du Calvaire.

June Seventh, Two Thousand and Ten After Death.

Twenty-Seven minutes past Four Ante Meridian.

Narrator says: One hour, two minutes and seven seconds ago, Brahman had stood loosely against the wall to my right. Leaning heavily against the drainpipe several inches below the blackened mark, he swore at his feet. He punched the wall around about the cut between the second and third stone from the floor and regretted it instantly.

Manitou stood a little behind him, your side of the two painted over grill faces. Scuffing her sole along the kerb. She let her eyes rest on an abandoned anonymous alimentation bag, and let her thoughts rest on the fate of its fleeting owner. And the assuredly finished contents, assuredly at least two cans of Amsterdam Maximator. The fissure concretely perceivable, in the two foot and a half distance between their bodies, and ever pushing further.

A fissure ripped promptly by inaction. They had formerly been together pressed. Close to the electrical box to my left. Manitou had however, felt more inclined to pay attention to the box and its black paint admonishment, than the amorous come ons of her beau of time passed, current, and inevitable future.

Inaction leading to the deserted scene in which we find ourselves. A deserted scene where in the air lingers final words:

What about your coat?

- Fuck the coat.

SHUTTER SPEED AND BROKEN GLASS. 1.

Wed, 31 Aug 2011 23:47:00 +0200

Chapter One.

The Bastille.

June Twenty-Eighth, Two Thousand and Ten After Death.

Thirty Four minutes past Eleven Post Meridian.

Narrator says: To my near left is a couple. The male is Emanuel Brahman, he is a researcher at a small security services company. His hobbies are bowls and stamp collecting. He has worn glasses since the age of seven, when the orbs within his eye sockets twisted in to the shape of rugby balls. He wears an earring in his right ear, a subtle silver link tight against the flesh. This addition goes unseen in attached photography due to the angle at which he holds his head. He is thirty four years of age. To his right is the female Gitche Manitou. She is a receptionist at a central Parisian bank. Her work is repetitive but she enjoys the calm of the wide open office space and greeting familiar clients. She has few pass times other than spending her time with M. Brahman. She too has worn glasses since the age of seven, which acted as common ground when first meeting M. Brahman. Her hair is a dark auburn. Her eyes a similar shade. She is thirty six years of age. They left their apartment together at approximately Ten minutes past Ten Post Meridian. They have sat in silence for the last Fifteen minutes, which M. Brahman is about to attempt to dissipate. In the time they have been sat down they have consumed nothing. The waiter visible back left has been shooed away several times.

To my extreme left is a couple. Thomas and Philipe, they require no second names as they are simply supplementary characters providing the scene with a well necessitated depth.

The irony of the scene lies in the fact that, Thomas and Philipe have recently found each other. Their first meeting has gone well and they have found themselves in a jovial mood. We cannot know the future, but for the present all is fine. Juxtaposed to this is M. Brahman and Mlle. Manitou. They have been together for Five years, Six months, Twenty-Eight days, Seventeen hours and Forty-Six seconds. This relationship ended Three point Five seconds ago upon the utterance of the words: “Maybe we should stop.” And it stopped.

SHUTTER SPEED AND BROKEN GLASS serie A coming in a...

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 14:58:17 +0200

SHUTTER SPEED AND BROKEN GLASS

serie A coming in a bit.

Photographs courtesy of sister wolf Pezzo.

WPS&B

A TRAIN CARRIAGE IN RELIEF.

Thu, 18 Aug 2011 21:33:00 +0200

The segment opens with the trundle of a train on tracks. It closes with them also, and in this the scene imbibes itself as an ouroboros. Constantly playing out in the nether the single purpose for which it was composed.

Tap the lower row of teeth against the backs of the top row. Once, twice. First to the right, then to the left. Repeat and pause a beat. 1234-1234-1234-1234. With stress on the 2; in quick succession. And out of the silence flashes a train, darting out onto the tracks.

What tracks? I’m not so sure. Sorry, pleased to meet you. Don’t mind my use of I, or me, for that matter. I and me are different addresses for the same character; that is, me. Or I. Whichever you prefer.

Where are we? That is, you and I. Thou and me. He and thee?… No, no. Well, where are we? Only you can say. I’m blind after all. And deaf. I wasn’t always. Not in my reality anyway. My original one. But in the process of freezing this moment I have lost my sense. I’ve become senseless you might say. And at the point at which our beings intertwine I have lost all but this droning laborious voice. You see we live at two entirely different moments in time, I throwing myself forward, and you backward. For this we must each give up that we consider our outer humanity at the door. Or the page, rather. And step into the ether of information in which our conscious meets outside the chronology of time and matter. Right now at Two hours, Seventeen minutes and Thirty-Seven seconds ante meridian, Second of May, Two Thousand and Eleven after death, I hold you in front of me. And you there, you receive this moment, and hold it right now this snippet; in your hands. We have broken the rules of the continuum and have been punished. Me deaf, you dumb. Both blind.

But we shouldn’t let that get us down. Any rebellion is good rebellion. And so allow me to answer the question for you. Take four seconds. Look around you. This is where we are. A room? A street? A field? It’s unimportant, what is important is that we allow ourselves to suspend our disbelief. To blink once, twice, three times, and on the fourth see one another for the first time. To give each other back our eyes. We can resist. We can claw back some semblance of the material from the void. Wrest these orbs from the faceless malingerers that police human memory. And see where and what we should not.

Hear the tracks yet? 1234-1234-1234-1234 – your surroundings blur and fade out of focus as the four walls of a train compartment envelop us. And I am no longer runic jottings on a page. But sat across from you. Smiling. Well, trying to. I’ve never used these cheek muscles before. Tricky business.

Now for the benefit of setting, please allow me to manifest a context in past tense. So, the train boarded in Zurich, where I began. However, it had travelled from Munich before that. Its final destination is… Barcelona, according to our boarding passes. However the stops between Zurich and there are a mystery. Before that even. Of the A and the B we can only be certain. And not all that certain. I wasn’t here from the start. I’ll just have to take the rail company’s word on that one. And anyway, you. When you joined us, back at the top of the page. We were travelling at a nauseatingly slow speed through somewhere or other. They all look the same really, you know the sort. Pastoral bleakness. A tractor or something in the distance doing whatever people with tractors do with them. Hedges. Ditches. The like.

And me. Well, the words I am communicating in appear to be English and so I suppose I am English. Definitely not Australian. Perhaps American. Although you qualify an American by a certain furtive fecundity which seems to pervade all they do. And it feels a little like such a quality is lacking in my demeanour. Either way, I suppose it only takes a translator to change my nationality. Change my cultural voice as it were. So, I suppose that assertion can be laid by the way side. I am, I greatly suspect, male. Mainly due to the fact that I have addressed you, a total stranger until six paragraphs ago, in a questioning and some what forceful tone. A tone that I don’t particularly associate with the female approach to conversation. Age. Somewhere between 20 and 30. Maybe 40. The rest I’ll leave to you. Clothes and what have you.

Now, for the benefit of further accumulative setting, please allow me to aid you in manifesting our adopted surroundings. Our compartment is small. You sit across from me on the red leather seats. I sit legs either side of a crack in the casement. The seats in general are worn around the seams and split in the middle. Showing what I presume is the canvas it is mounted on. The door is to my left, your right. It slides open, from my side to yours. However it’ll be doing no such thing in this instance. It is dark wood effect plastic. Scuffed near the bottom and scraped by the handle. With a small judas around about shoulder height. On the flank from which it opens it is lined with slightly tarnished black rubber. Which in its current arrangement sits snug in its wall bracket. On the wall next to the door on my side is a set of instructions seemingly indiscernible due to ageing. However just gibberish on closer inspection. Hanging on the wall on your side is a small carbon dioxide fire extinguisher. Held in place by two metal forceps. It is unclear whether it is empty or at all functional. Above our heads two metal poles run the width of the compartment. Netting hangs loose between each pole and the respective parallel wall in closest proximity. Intended for baggage but we have none. The window to my right, your left. It is large and caked in dirt, although the blackness sliding past outside is clear through the muck. The window is lined by two bunched up blackout curtains that too are caked in dried particles of human flesh. They have clearly never been used, probably out of concern for the health of travellers.

Below the window is a small table. MDF covered in wood effect plastic. As the door but looks a slightly different tone. It may be the light. It is possible to fold the thing away, it is bolstered by an up ended atrium which can be swung flat against the wall. There is an ashtray on and on and on and on.

This is compartment Four of carriage Dee. Well, you know it’s not. It’s not nothing. It’s simply neither hither nor thither. So it’s gottabe sumthin. But I feel like I’m beginning to approach an attempt at arriving at an answer. And that wasn’t isn’t will not be the idea. We’re just here for the journey. We just want to question question question, don’t we? We just want the question. To find the question, rather. No, to analyse the process of finding the question. Or more like observe the realisation that there is a question to find, perhaps. Or perhaps not. Whose to say what we’re observing. Given the fact we cannot see, we’re presented with not few hindrances in our striving for empiricism. And scrabbling about in the self imposed shadows won’t help a soul. The four corners of this page hardly constitute those of the world. Like I said, you hold before you a snippet. Of what I’m not so sure. But then I’m not so sure of much these days. Even If we had our own eyes, maybe it’s just the light, perhaps the table and the door are of the same tone. Or the notice informative, concise and adeptly executed. Who’s to say? God knows. But then we already know he got tired and left us to it.

Now, do I have your confidence? I mean, am I confident that I can confide in your confidence? I should be confident in your confidence honestly. Because you’re the only confident I have. Here in this compartment. On this train. On this track. The unending trundle of wheels on steel. Hour after hour. It’s enough to knock anyone’s composure… While I was waiting in the bar for you – funny story actually – when I was waiting at the bar, there were two men stood beside me. Always strange, bars on trains. In one corner of the restaurant car, partitioned off. Same stuff as in here. Wood effect tat. Chrome. You know the sort. I was waiting for our drinks. The woman behind the bar having bother with the spirits bottles, what with the shunting of the train and all. And to be honest she couldn’t tell the difference between scotch and bourbon. I had to ask her if I looked like I drank bourbon. She didn’t bother to look at me and poured whichever bottle was closest. But these two men, I assume they were doing pretty much the same as us. On a static journey. They too had whisky. They asked for water and she gave them a ridiculously over priced bottle of branded stuff. A bottle of water too far I presume. As this pre-empted their exploding in to one another. I don’t mean literally of course. I mean it more like they started shouting. Hushed at first. Then louder. Until the whole bar, and then the whole restaurant car was embroiled in the thing. Fists flying. I stood out on the side, I prefer to think of myself as a kind of observer, y’know. But before all that it began rather quite hushed. In German or something, as a matter of fact. But for us it can be in English. You can give them comedic accents if you so wish. One was Austrian, the other Bavarian.

Now this, this is the good stuff. All the way from the Bavarian mountains. The best water in the world.

Rubbish! Vienna. That’s the best water you’ll find. You can drink it straight from the tap it’s that good.

So you can see how it goes, right? They went on and on. The girl fumbling with the bottles. On and on and on and on. It was all quite maudlin. So one pushed another, another pushed one, and before you knew it the partition was on the ground. These tiny hammers - intended for use breaking windows in the event of some catastrophe - being flung this way and that, and I. Your narrator with only the best intentions, stood and watched. You see, I’m not so pernicious as to remind either of them that where ever the water is from it’s the same. Dribbling down the mountains, hills, valleys. Gurgling through the bones and sticks. Screaming along the banks. Tumbling, wailing, collapsing, writhing, shifting nervously amid the mass. Drank or not, each drop grasped by the unseen hand and pulled thousands up, by the billion. Dragged and dragged and dragged and dragged. And dropped once again to begin once again dribbling. Over and over and over. Ad infinitum. Over and over and over and over and over.

Wait, what was I saying again? I was trying to get at something. I had purpose. A reason. Raison d’etre. Whatever that means. I must’ve read it once. Anyway, what’s important is you’re here. You’re finally here. Smiling back at me with those wood pulp cheeks. Holding out my eyes for me, as we drag on. Sailing. Careering, to the middle of the interminable night.

The light draws in to a pin prick and is then gone completely, leaving only the constant repetitive sound in your ears of time rushing on in every direction without you. Before, shortly, that too fades.

One Two Three Four / One Two Three Four / One Two Three Four / One Two Three Four

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

listen for the break.

TO WALK AT NIGHT.

Thu, 28 Jul 2011 23:20:00 +0200

I like to walk at night when the city thinks it’s alone. You can walk on and on and on and see not a soul. It is the rare ones you do which are the reason for this exercise. Walking at night is different to that of daytime. In the daytime pack mentality exacts itself. If your clothes are at all unkempt. If they are not of the correct cut or cloth. If your hair has grown over the top of your ears, you are not welcome in the crowd. You are spectacular among the crowd, and therefore shunned. With reactions ranging from awkward side glances to verbal or physical abuse. You are identified as outside the crowd while within and this is simply not acceptable. When I was young, I would grow my hair, I would wear unsuitable clothing for a Monday morning, I relished the disgust, the gritted jaws and poorly formulated insults. But now I realise that this exercise does not discount the individual from social morality. It is too conscious. Too polarised. It simply draws the confusion out quicker. The mob can sense your difference a lot more subtle. If your face lacks the correct strengths of determination and indifference. If your gait and step do not imply a B to an A. If you do not carry that mornings Evening Standard. You are already singled out before the flamboyance invokes the crowd’s humanity upon you. No, to walk at night is the only way.

When the city thinks it’s alone. With the cold night’s breeze which floats slowly by your cheek, and the shadows that absolves the daylight crowds in diaspora of their sins and dalliance in real time. When social morality is suspended. To walk at night is to become the other, the darkened doorways, the silent paving stones, the broken street lamps. To become the night, and to taste all that bathes in it. To be the Other, and observe so many people at so many keyholes.

I began on this night; Sunday, Ten hours, Twenty-Two minutes and Forty-Seven seconds post meridian, Twenty-Ninth of the Fifth, Two Thousand and Eleven after death. I began on Tottenham Court Road, by the British Museum. I cut down the side of a casino, away from the lights and nocturnal crowds who become exaggerated forms of their daylight predecessors through the utilisation of drink, drugs, hopes for sex and through these things suffer the malady of inflated ego. The looks followed as I walked across the flow and disappeared in to the side street. Further on beyond the museum and the taxis waver and vanish. Once again back out on to a main street, full of tourists, which draws out a further intensified effect being the only Englishman on an English street. Going against the grain and once again dropping in to the darkness, on the cusp of Bloomsbury, Holborn and Clerkenwell. Great Ormond Street ahead beyond a small fenced garden square. To my right run two thin streets going back to another main road. On the second of the two lies a launderette. In day time an elderly woman sits quietly at her counter, maroon bib. Folding other people’s underwear. However by night the shop is closed. Although the door is open as her grown son leans out smoking a joint. I am far enough away for my movement to go unnoticed and he sighs softly as he exhales.

And on. Breaching Lambs Conduit Street I walk along the right side of the road which lacks street lamps. There is a pub on the corner forty feet up which seems to be winding to an end, a girl ten feet up on the other side of the road leans unnaturally over a house’s railing to vomit profusely on to a basement flat’s front door step. She is wearing a tight black dress and high heels. Her hair is long, however she doesn’t bother to hold it back. As I pass the liquid sound reduces and rises to a dry retch which goes on for some time before fading behind me.

I pass close by a front window, where a couple in their thirties sit in lounging clothes. They have a hand down each other’s comfortable trousers but do not look at each other. Their hands move rhythmically. Mechanically. A television set is implied by the blue light thrown on to their faces and the faint sound of over dramatic orgasm, however out of picture to the left hand side and therefore must stay only assumed. The outline of a breakfast counter in the background introduces an open plan kitchen. On the counter rest two plates, a pepper mill and salt shaker. The hands continue their rhythm as the window quickly passes from view.

Deeper in to Clerkenwell and I fall upon a mews street, a man urinates against a large green industrial bin on my right. The houses have been modernised with full glass fronts. Most lights are off which encourages me to try a seemingly unlocked bike by a front door. It is black, new but made to look very old. It has a brown wicker basket and leather bolted seat. However it has a built in locking mechanism over the back brake and is therefore rendered redundant.

I carry on, on the right a man in his forties stands outside a lit doorway. Another man wearing no shoes or socks stands on the precipice of the habitude giving a goodbye. Young children scream out from inside. Their demeanour is a little awkward and the man wearing shoes hangs his shoulders loose from what I imagine to be down to an over consumption of wine. My foot scuffs on the uneven cobbles which acts as a creak on a staircase. They glance towards my silhouette, squint to make out my face however feel that either way it would be best to part. A rapid bye and the door shuts, the light is extinguished, and the heeled man heads quickly to the further mouth of the mews.

Walking on I come across Granville Road, leading to Granville Square. From the corner of my eye I see a flash of white. An old woman sprints along my field of vision. Wearing a pale blue ward slip. A ghost with a shock of white hair, she disappears in to an alley, retreating from the slight light in to the deepest shadow.

I walk around the outside pavement which rings the fenced park in the middle of the square and out on to a side street. A solitary shop sits lit up below the oak trees lining the road. I enter, passing the counter on my left and a fridge of drinks on my right. A man sleeps in front of the cigarette display. Ahead of me the walls are lined with biscuits and other non-essentials. I pick up a drink and circle the shelves. A man enters the shop from an unseen doorway behind the fridges at the back who I assume is the sleeping man’s colleague. He follows me closely round the shop, eyeing the items I pick up and put back, straightening them out on the shelf and following me further. I approach the counter and he stands up close behind me. Peering over my shoulder attempting to glean what I intend to purchase. I can smell alcohol on his breath and sweat in his clothes. The sleeping man will not be woken and I place the drink on the counter before leaving. The invasive follower picks up the drink and restores it to its ordered place before standing on the door step watching my retreat.

I decide to begin my return. On the street leading back to Granville Square a previously unnoticed light flickers from a basement flat. The window is curtained but the glass door allows observation of a man around fifty, sat at a computer desk. He is wearing what seems to be a grey T shirt and presumably nothing else. He masturbates to a video played using Windows Media Player of two heavily tanned women with large breasts fornicating by a pool. Odds are in Los Angeles. The poolside is surrounded by a large hedgerow, although the next door roof is just visible, and the blue shadow of large hills climb high against a spotless blue sky. Over a chair next to the man is neatly lain a black suit, jacket, then trousers. Then shirt, tie and belt. Cufflinks sit ready on the computer desk. His coat is not present.

Back in Granville Square and out of an alley way to the left walk three people. A man on the far right and woman on the far left. The ghost in the middle now with a long black macintosh draped over her shoulders. They cross the square around the fenced garden and disappear in to a darkened street to the right.

Upon meeting King’s Cross Road I choose a different side street to walk back on. Approaching it I walk thirty yards behind a group of men dressed in appropriately machismo clothes. Barely audibly they discuss women they have met and attempted or achieved seduction of that night. They punctuate their language with the word fuck often and punch each other in the arm in a jovial show of camaraderie. Two bid the others farewell before peeling off in to the next side street. They are quite far ahead of me, on the opposite side of the street. The lamps are every fifty yards on alternating sides making it difficult to pick out shapes. I lose sight of them before noticing a writhing lump against a wall. The men kiss animatedly, the man with his back to the wall moves his hands around the other’s back in an aggressive and passionate manner. I pass them quietly and upon looking back see them straighten their clothes and flatten down their hair. They look around cautiously before walking back on themselves, returning to King’s Cross Road.

I begin to tire and feel I should return toot sweet, however feel compelled to make a singular detour towards Russell Square. I am pondering for what reason when at a singular cafe terrace I cannot believe my eyes. There always seems to be a moment when you’ve seen too much. When you have mocked the tide of humanity in your adoption of inaction. In your unnatural role as a pair of eyes and nothing else. When chaos will throw your humanity back in your face. And there she sits, her back to me, her face to one side. She sneers at a scantily clad woman walking passed her toward me. The man sitting across the table from her faces me and seems to notice the death in my face. Staring in to me as I pass their table, I hope to be saved from recognition by my heavy black coat and wide brimmed black hat.

I hurry down the street and on to the long boulevards around the university. Nearing home port my heart begins to beat regularly again, breath regaining its silence. I turn on to a street of mansion houses, up ahead taxis hurrying down Tottenham Court Road are visible. I notice two men sat on the ground outside a large lorry loading bay, metal shutter all the way down. Their movements are stunted and imply violence. One man holds a thin long object up to the light of the lamps and flicks it in the familiar way. He notices me but doesn’t offer me a glance. The other doesn’t bother to look either. I am five feet away from them and a priori irrelevant. They do not recognise me as anything other than the shadows that surround them. One pulls up his jeans leg and prods around the flesh. The other stands up and pulls down his trousers. Genitalia lit up in the spotlight. He packs blue tissue the kind they use in bars around his testicles and the end of his penis before finding a vein in his inner thigh underneath the tissue and pushes down the stopper. The muscles in his body instantly take on the quality of rubber. He is standing bent over like this rigid as they pass out of view behind a silver Mercedes Benz S-registration.

It is Monday, One hour, Four minutes and Fifty Five seconds ante meridian, Thirtieth of the Fifth, Two Thousand and Eleven after death when I sit at my writing desk by the open window. Feeling the breeze wandering in. I take pen in hand and write with black ink on white paper the words ‘I like to walk at night…’

more guff to come.

Wolves in London. Photograph courtesy of schwester slug Lula.

Thu, 28 Jul 2011 23:19:12 +0200

Wolves in London. Photograph courtesy of schwester slug Lula.

THE HOLE.

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 18:42:00 +0200

The block is much akin to all the others. The few others, that is. Tall and concrete. A facsimile even, of the four others reaching up from the rubble. The area had been thriving. Community. Young families. Red brick terraces rolling off over the curvature. But no more. Not now. Levelled and re-begun. Stacked up above one another. We could look in any one of these, any one of the hutches inside and see the same thing. The same floral wallpaper. The same plastic wood effect adorning the gas heater. The same people trying not to notice the creeping damp running down behind said heater by the window. The pot bellied ceiling. The rancid tiles crawling from the bathroom floor half way up the walls. We could, but we haven’t yet populated the scene. Have we? And we will only be choosing one of these flats to peek in. And so you can apply the character, events and outcomes to every other one, in all five. Which in this is all the world. You must accept that which is depicted and roll it out across all the hutches, because it’s all I’m allowing you to know. And you have to fill the shadows with something, right? But more importantly a door slams.

- That bastard. That fucking bastard. I’m sick to death. Sick to death of all this. The least he can do is fix that bloody hole. The fucking cock end.

This voice is the voice of the protagonist. The fucking cock end is the antagonist. The bloody hole is the catalyst. Sick to death is the motivation.

He crosses the space between one wall and another, approaching the window. He reaches the window at the exact moment nine hundred and ninety-nine repetitions of him repeat this action. Looking out of their respective facsimiles. Hands on hips, head shaking side to side in lament. In every other visible window he does this too. The windows that are not visible have no protagonist to lament, and therefore with no character, are no setting, hold no antagonist, no catalyst, no motivation. And so the dark side of these buildings are voided. He looks out on to 2-D buildings in every one of these one thousand instances (for the towers are arranged in such a way that the image viewed from any of these thousand windows offers the same landscape), a ground which will never be dug, a sky that will never be breached. Because this is the only information that need exist in this world in order to conjure an illusory setting. We will never leave this room, and so unlike thrusting a knife through a canvas, we will never see the wall on which it is mounted.

He recedes from the window and so too does the pale yellow of his T-shirt from every window in the projected view. He gains an old brown padded chair centred in the middle of the vomit yellow carpet. The chair faces a party wall. One of the party walls. It must be assumed that all four walls, ceiling and floor partition him from him again at all angles. We have not yet ascertained whether the window wall is infact a window, or a projected image. The only way of finding out being to climb out, I believe our protagonist will accept it as stands. The door through which he entered too, it is unclear whether there is a door at all. And perhaps not just a large and disconcerting sound of doorways collapsing.

He looks up at the wall opposite him. Tutting. Screwing up his face and muttering obscenities under his breath. Up near the top, in the bud of a rotted sunflower sits a small black smudge. No bigger than a two pence piece. A dark mark which seems to reach out for the entire room.

- Tsssk… fucking… tchut… shit… bloody fucking hole… fuck.

He carries on like this for some time, barely audible oaths. Standing, he begins to pace the room. Back and forth. Up and Down. Choosing tangents at random at which to traipse. Always pausing when passing, the backrest of the chair. To stare at the black mark, before shaking his head, looking down and swearing at his feet.

Finally, he grasps the chair and threatens to throw it, but places it politely back in its place. He works up courage staring, straight ahead. Or rather loses understanding. Eyes blurring out of focus a little. Approaching the mark he reaches up and pushes his finger inside. Probing of the cavity offers no results. Other than the singular contemplation of the space’s lack of any considerable temperature. On his tip toes he hovers his eye around the general area. However the physical relation of his cranium to that in question blocks all light.

Returning to the chair and taking it in hand he re-approaches the mark, and now standing he places his ear to the surface around it. All he hears is the wide maw of sheer nothing which he mistakes for being taking breath. The deep slow inhalation of falling chasm. Sucking in deep and like hidden hands at a fruit stall, plucking out his hearing. He stands deaf and looks around the room. All sound gone. He screams, we may assume by the hollow his jaw has formed. He stops. He shouts. He stops. He makes a single collapsing judgement; and begins to rip at the wall paper. Sunflowers wilting in sputum.

The wall is bare underneath. A khaki colour. In places, brown. Mottled black. Presented with no clues he looks from wall to wall to wall to wall. Running, he rips the paper. Pries up the carpet silently. He finds nothing. Only a brown padded chair, and a dim light fixture. A broken gas heater, and a black smudge.

At a loss he returns to this smudge. Picking at the edges he manages to tear a larger space. Satisfied, he looks for a light switch. Finding none he takes the bulb from where it is embedded, and in the darkness gets accustomed to the lack of light. He pushes his head through the hole, searching for his ear drums. Presented with no results other than the singular contemplation of the complete lack of sensation in his skin. No hot, or cold. He falls through the darkness to return the light bulb to its position. Tripping over the chair he finds the fitting. Screwing the end in it reaches the point at which it may hang independent and yet offers the protagonist no light. He feels for it growing hot and senses nothing. He takes it out and puts it in again. He takes it out and puts it in again. He takes it out and puts it in again. He takes it out and puts it in again. Dropping it on the floor, where we assume it has smashed.

The air tastes stale, and something somewhere breeds an overwhelming sense of a tether-less end. Before, eventually, these sensations too are gone. We see no thing. We hear no thing. We feel nothing. Before a brief flash of white rips through us.

And for a moment, we see a padded brown chair at an unfamiliar angle. We hear a man gasping with effort. Shoulders hunched. And akin to thrusting a knife through a canvas, we see the wall on to which it is mounted. The khaki, brown. Mottled black; shattering. A sharp tempest running through the catalyst. our protagonist. Our antagonist. Our motivation. Us. And calming, eventually, returning everything to an unmoving, disconcerting lack of colouring. Rending us, him, everything and all away. And replacing this world with a featureless yawning expanse of whitest white.

more pretentious twaddle to come.

Wolves in Berlin. Photograph courtesy of brother slug Jakob.

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 18:38:12 +0200

Wolves in Berlin. Photograph courtesy of brother slug Jakob.

MANIFESTO.

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 17:56:00 +0200

FUCK FIRST (from politeness) ~~ENGLAND~~

FUCK its climate for its sins and infections

DISMAL SYMBOL, Set round our bodies,

of effeminate lout within.

VICTORIAN VAMPIRE, the LONDON cloud sucks

the TOWN’S heart.

A 1000 MILE LONG, 2 KILOMETER Deep

BODY OF WATER even, is pushed against us

from the Floridas, TO MAKE US MILD.

OFFICIOUS MOUNTAINS keep back DRASTIC WINDS

SO MUCH VAST MACHINERY TO PRODUCE

NOTHING MUCH AT ALL

POLITE CALL CENTRE

FOR AMERICANS TO SHOUT AT

WAIST COATS OVER T-SHIRTS

PIES

PINTS

MOOD SWING

MILLICENTS

THE ROXY AND

EPHEMERA

PALLID ARTS

AND PALER THEATRE

CONDOM HEAD POLITICIANS

PSEUDO-SOCIO BULLSHIT HEMP

WEEK END ANARCHO

APPARATCHIK

~~IRISH WEDGE HEAD~~ CARDBOARD

HUMANITY

FUCK

the flabby sky that can manufacture no snow, but

can only drop the sea on us in a drizzle like a poem

by a droning undergrad product of pay per view fetishised institutions of monetary gain.

FUCK

the lazy air that cannot stiffen the back of the SERPENTINE,

who has never and now forgotten how to put Aquatic steel half way down the MANCHESTER CANAL.

but one hundred and ten years ago we saw distinctly both snow and

ice here.

may some vulgarly inventive, but useful person, arise,

and restore to us the necessary BLIZZARDS.

LET US ONCE MORE WEAR THE ERMINE

OF THE NORTH.

WE BELIEVE IN THE EXISTENCE OF THIS

~~USEFUL LITTLE CHEMIST~~

~~IN OUR MIDST!~~

FUCK

THE STONE GRINDER

WITH NO AXE TO GRIND

WITH HIS NOSE TO THE STONE

AND ANOTHER THROUGH HIS CALF

SLOWLY TEARING HIS OWN FACE FROM THE BONE

WITH THE TRUNDLING PEDAL OF HIS OWN FLAT FOOT

FUCK the

BLOGGER

HACKING HACK

ART-PIMP

PERPETUAL STUDENT

BACK PACKER

SOCIAL LADDER DE-GREASER

RAT-PIG BANKER

FUCK

years 1837 to 2011 and on

Fuck abysmal inexcusable middle class

(also Aristocracy and Proletariat)

FUCK

pasty shadow cast by GIGANTIC Thatcher

(imagined at introduction of BOURGEOIS VICTORIAN VISTAS - REALISED IN DECONSTRUCTION OF PROLETARIAT ONES)

WRING THE NECK OF all sick inventions born in the quick successions of progressive white wakes.

FUCK

all those to-day who have taken on that Rotten Menagerie of commodity and commodifier,

and still crack their whips and tumble in Piccadilly Circus, or Shoreditch, or Camden, or any such place affiliated with vulgar human yearning disrepute, as though London were a provincial town.

WE WHISPER IN YOUR EAR A GREAT SECRET.

LONDON IS NOT A PROVINCIAL

TOWN.

We will allow the World Cup. But we do not want the GLOOMY JEREMY KYLE CIRCUS IN Picadilly Circus.

IT IS PICCADILLY’S CIRCUS!

Or your corpse in Shore’s ditch. Your camera shutters deafening the Cam’s den. And on and on.

~~ad infinitum.~~

Approriated with acerbic approbum from here.

By annelids,

WPS&B

worse to come.