DREAM: 8th of December 2013
I was in the box room at home, trying to get some sleep. I opened the window and could see all these hippy types walking back and forth. It appeared that some sort of music festival was going on in my back garden. Why didn't my parents tell me? I was outraged and deeply concerned about my sleep. I then saw this 18 year old man with a beard, prophesying like there was no tomorrow. I desperately searched for something to maim. He sang some mantra and the crowd lapped it up, all transfixed and cooing. I should have tipped off the dole office.
DAY: 9th of December 2013
Meditate.
I debate about shaving my head. I then remember that the ESB are on strike and are threatening to switch off the power. What if I was in mid shave and it cuts out? I would have to walk around town looking like a cry for help.
Exercise.
I get distracted by the numerous sounds pouring in from my stain covered bathroom window. I find myself blindly figuring out each sound and than giving it a narrative. I then add the time of day into the mix. 9 am so that must be a school run or off to work or delivery truck or postman. I ponder and think about how all this is taking place solely in my head. It could be just two fella's banging a stick off a barrel for all I know.
Switch on the electric shower but no water. First blood by the ESB? Finally it works and I step under. Ice freezing cold! Did I cut their pension's?
I imagine going up to the picket line of ESB workers and asking them should I tie a kite to my tongue and walk underneath a power line. If they warn me, is that crossing the picket line? Shcab.
I think about what it would be like to have no electricity for a week, no internet.
I reflect on how the hot water triggers off thoughts and ideas in my head. Is there a way of keeping this creativity outside of the shower? Perhaps a little shower that could fit into your school bag, dip your hand in when you need that jolt. I imagine boardroom's of businessmen merging with Japan sitting under showers. Lovers on a first date sharing non-committal witticisms, being drenched to the bone. Maybe that is the secret to hypnotism, convince the client that they are constantly having a shower. Paul McKenna wept.
Then when I brush my teeth I always need to go to the bathroom. The strange physiology of the bathroom...
In my room and passively looking out the window. I see an elderly woman waiting for the bus. She extends her hand and the bus pulls in. I wonder does she, on some unconscious, base level, for a split second, believe that she has super powers? If you think about it, it's a person sticking out their hand and making a huge, mechanical juggernaut bend to their will, taming a metal beast. This interpretation could have positive benefits. Could empower the elderly, make them feel stronger and genuinely listened to.
It triggers off in me that idea I have for my own super power. The ability to give hernia's at will. For the times when you are in a gym or at football and you see someone posturing and posing. Just give a little wink and bang. A stomach erection.
See an ad on my laptop about Irish children, how they are overweight and obese. The American cultural takeover is finally complete. No one can hear you tweet.
Make tea in the kitchen. Think about how when one thought comes it can trigger off other thoughts, memories and association's. I begin to think of certain situations in my dreams and how they can spiral off into other situations and associations and that maybe the waking life isn't so different. Are dreams just more cryptic, encoded day time thoughts? More loaded allegories than just mere linear, straightforward thoughts?
I reflect on how I have lately been listening to music from a certain time in my life. I unconsciously gravitated towards it again. Am I trying to time travel? Is there a conscious reason for this unearthing? Or is it just because it is good music? Maybe I am just trying to do for music what Proust did for tea.
Decrepit explorer.
In the future bomb shelter bunkers on the edge of the world, will even one cream cracker remain completely intact? Even one?
Read the Guardian online. Article about Snowden giving evidence to a European court, live over a video link. Some party in England wants it stopped, saying that Snowden is a traitor and is putting people's live at risk. I don't really remember hearing of any deaths since the revelations came out. Nothing. Not even a vigorous headlock. Although to be fair headlocks could be classified.
Walk pass the Salthill petrol station.
Pretty blonde drives by. I wonder is she unemployed too? You can never tell. Unless you corner them. It reminds me about my Attractive Loser theory.
Approach the crossroads. See a young man in skinny black jeans, walking as if he is carrying smashing eggs in his underwear.
Walk pass St. Mary's secondary school. See an ESB van and workers littered around the scaffolding of a house. Man in yellow jacket and hard hat meets my eyes. We have a bit of a stand off. I felt like going up to him and asking him what was up with all that shit earlier in the shower? I let it pass. For now.
Walk pass a house for sale. Potted plant and dog teddy in the top window. Sold! Never mind the desperately needed paint job and disheveled roof. A failed piece of a tree and a stunned dog will seal the deal!
I begin to think of a dog teddy. Is it a dog teddy bear? A girl doll girl human?
I turn right and approach the canal. I see a Honda Civic parked in the smallest driveway conceivable. Was it even a car or just a garden ornament? Do they airlift it in and out everyday? Who are these people and are they hiring?
Walk down the canal. Helicopter flies overheard. No? It can't be? A local business perhaps? Airlifts vehicles into narrow and cumbersome driveways.
Woman walks passed me, face down in a book. Walking and reading. Strange. Man reading iphone walks by and trips. I am at the border of two shifting worlds. And hungry.
Walk pass the window of Ward's shop. See the deli girl, swallowing a mouthful of coffee, red eyes desperately seeking to drink in as much sensory freedom as they can muster. Ration it out over her endless thankless shift.
Walk into the college. See all the leaves from the trees scattered and piled on the ground. All the trees barren, except for a solitary black Dunnes Stores shopping bag, the only known survivor, proudly hanging on for dear life. I think about, possibly in the summer, planting a papier mache middle finger in that tree and just wait.
Go to play the piano but there are 'Exams in Progress.'Head to the common room of the chapel. Some lad, taking up the entire room, books and notebooks out, on youtube. On youtube for Our Lord. Scum. I go into the main church and play the electric. Old and young come in to pray and light candles while a bald unemployed man bangs out his honky tonk boogie woogie in the corner. I sit and wait for an elderly woman to call me a 'heathen.'Doesn't happen. Disappointed. I begin to cook up possible excuses for them if they do approach me with their senile scorn. "I am praying to God through the non-verbal medium of music" or "Have a go at the lad on youtube in the common room, pretending to study. Go bust his maladjusted chops. Mrs O' Flaherty."
It would be funny if they were actually lighting candles for me. If he is taking requests ask him for more of that hair stuff for human heads everyone else seems to have. Cheers.
Walk passed the Aula Maxima and notice the trees. Some of them look like skeletons hands shooting out of the ground.
Think about shaping events as they come and how I always fall back into the safety hammock of a daydream and envision and prepare situations and modes of future being. How futile and devoid of reality that practice is. Is it an evolutionary thing? If you know there are wild apes in a certain area, is it only natural to prepare yourself for battle when traversing that terrain in the future? I suppose that situation is a lot different from say, preparing something witty to say at a party, planning each move and line, rehearsing it perfectly, even when you are driving a car. The mind wanders and blathers.
Walk pass the sign down the canal, the Lower Canal sign. The C has been etched out. Sadly there are not enough BAFTA's to go round. IFTA's maybe.
I watch the swans. One has his head submerged under water. I wonder if swans ever threaten each other with suicide? "I'll do it, I'll keep it down there and won't come up, you'll be sorry then!" An auld Eastender's or Yeats job.
Go into Ernie's and buy the makings of a soup. Don't like the look of the broccoli so Plan B: Supervalu. Walk into the shop with a bag of pre- bought vegetables in my hand. Will they think I am stealing? But my bag doesn't have the Supervalu logo? But I could have easily brought in my own bag and done the bad deed. Surely they could just check the CCTV? I would never be able to show my face in here again. Even if I was proven innocent the embarrassment would be too great. I only want soup. I line up at the counter and inform the cashier I brought this bag in with me. She smiles but her eyes register something else, something fundamental and secret. I have lost her respect. This soup is tearing my life apart.
On the walk home I think about if they did accuse me and check the CCTV and find me innocent they might give me my shopping for free in order to bypass the bad press. I think about how I could pretend I bought a dvd player with my broccoli. Bottle of Jameson perhaps.
Walk passed house that says Legio Marie on the door. Lego of the Virgin Mary. Good to see her diversifying. Not just a one trick pony. I'd say that house is a trick or treat hotspot. They probably would say 'tricks' are for the devil and 'treats' are inhuman pleasures, the reward of sin. 'Or' is kosher.
Driving instructors are needed but what freak of a child grew up and wanted to be one for a living? It's like someone watching a bikini competition and then wanting to grew up and make massage oil in a factory.
Elderly couple, standing at bus stop outside my door. I nod and pass them and search for my door key. I twist it in and push. No luck. i do it again. Still no luck. Third time. Again no. Finally it creaks open. The disadvantages of being a vegetarian.
I make the soup and exorcise the demons. Transferring social pain into edible art.
Monday 9 December 2013
Wednesday 29 August 2012
DREAM: 17th of August 2012
I am working at Battles shop, a local family run business in my village. I am walking around and checking the stock on the shelves then move onto the till. I am then serving a customer and notice a shopping bag by his side. Perhaps he brought this in from another shop. I realise I am on the wrongside of the counter and have to reach over to retrieve one. I say 'And you brought that one in with you yes?' The shopping bag contained a box of Jaffa Cakes.'Yes' he said ' I had them in my garage'. We began to exchange small talk and he told me that he makes wooden houses for a living. I thought of all the hippies living in makeshift huts and homes, ignoring failing breastfed Irish society and its coercive chains and greedy red tape, despising modern culture and what it deems as conventional and normal, which nearly always transpires as lucrative for somebody else. Suddenly a man in a suit enters the scene. He looks like a stock FBI agent from terrible American daytime television. He doesn't look at me and barks 'Is this place safe?'. I told him the only harm around this humdrum cul de sac village, were everyday is a dress rehearsal for reality, is self harm. What we wouldn't give for a terrorist attack. He scanned the room with an observant and controlled eye, in charge of some secret information, the hidden beat of muscle memory unfolding and slotting itself into place behind his faceless dead eyed demeanour, waiting for the silent poised terrorist to jump out from the broccoli. He darted out the door and I ran to the window to raise the curtain and could see a van full of agents scanning the area then to spin and speed off down the vacant road. I return to the wooden house maker and resume to flex my customer service muscle. As he leaves a thought awoke from the bowels of a forgotten history class and I shout 'Sure didn't we invent the Crannog!' with a stumbling manic tongue tied pride. 'A what?' a startled girl to my side uttered. I told her crannog's were wooden structures dating back to 17th century Ireland which housed extended families, was used for hunting and fishing and acted as a sanctuary for those in trouble and in need of help. I began to think of sides and old ways.
DAY: 18th August 2012
Wake up to the cacophonous noise of multiple babies wailing like some sort of surround sound communal event of suffering, each wail triggers another like a set of sympathetic dominos. A galvanised prison crew uniting in song to mourn the death of their beloved leader. The sound is so intense and builds like some tawdry 80's paracetomol ad.
This housing estate is strange and depressing. The streets and playgrounds are empty but you can hear and feel the heat of unknown lives behind endless gray concrete walls and faceless windows. Thwarted dams at the brink of bursting, water seeping through the cracks. Two nights ago Katarina and I were sitting outside drinking lemon and ginger tea with milk when we heard a married couple argue. The wife called the husband a drunk, chastising him for being out for hours and leaving her with the kids, that its her birthday, that she hates him and was the biggest mistake of her life, that he has drained her and taken all her best years. We were speechless and could only laugh out of our nervousness. The argument had the same beat and rhythm of a soap opera. I never thought these scenes existed. Thinking they were only vomitted out of the pen by some mediocre Coronation Street hack. Perhaps they are magpied out of real life?
Walk to the cornershop to update my tube card. See a tabloid paper depicting a bruised and scarred woman. The story was about a British soldier returning from duty to find out that his wife was having an affair, so he decided to maim her and 'make her ugly' so no man would touch her again.
Walk to the fruit and veg shop to buy the contents of a laughable stir fry. I am wearing shorts and receive strange glances from the shop owner. It is as if my very presence is erasing the moral fortress he has spent a lifetime trying to maintain. What does he think I will be actually doing with the food?
Eat stir fry. Get the 73 from Essex Road to Kings Cross.
At work and I hear my fellow employees talk about the mystery shopper. A person that supposedly comes into your shop and secretly judges you on the presentation of the place, the service and overall mood. They tell us that if the branch is successful we will all get extra cash come wages day. A carrot on a string.
'Jesus is a mystery shopper,
buyer beware.
Like an uninvited stroke.
Descending from the air.'
I walk past a table and can hear Irish accents. Fills me with despair. Two rich Dublin girls sqwark with their gummy mouths, brandishing the letter 'S' like a stuttering socialite snake, Rachel Allen knock offs whose life long ambition is to make the perfect homemade guacamole. It's like they are bred on a farm sponsored by the Irish Rugby Football Union and Debenhams, fodder to the chinless rugby elite and incestous squash players.
I think back on the idea of 'Rich Irish people' and it sounds like an oxymoron. Half pregnant. Sensual Pope.
Walk to the bathroom. Not on lunch break. Bliss. Man walks past and catches me in mid yawn. He stares with arch eyebrows at my features, trying to work out my cryptic facial code. My face is covert braile and his eyes are hands.
I've got debilitating tiredness. Throwing and dragging my body around like veal jogging through water.
I take too long in the bathroom and wonder would anybody notice. I wonder how many people put their dignity on the line each day by saying they shat themselves, just for a few moments more of stolen freedom?
I walk the shop floor, emitting a low whine.
It's so hot I am nearly hallucinating. The kind of weather were you'll accept responsibility for a crime you didn't commit just so you can leave the room. Cool your forehead on the handcuffs.
Talk to the female chef and tell her that the oven she is working with smells like Christmas. She tells me that smell is actually oven cleaner. The spirit of Christmas in a bottle.
Talk to a fellow employee about future plans.I bring up the most common question in job interviews: "Where do you see yourself in 12 months time?" I am intriqued to hear what she will say. You can never say what you really think. You always have to tell your employer what they want to hear. "I see myself here with you Brad, as we are married to twin blonde stunners, who are outside salivating in our matching Ferrari's, as we laugh and engage each other in a never ending high five of perpetual bliss." Never say what you really think. Dead in a big occultist car crash, found bloody in a ditch with a face full of ram sperm. They just don't want to hear it.
Walk past a grief stricken, anorexic Jeremy Clarkson look a like, followed by a bloated, blimp like David Icke. Think about people that actually become celebrity look a likes for hire. Fulfilling? Then started to think about a company that would provide metaphysical look a likes of celebrities instead, depicting their inner state of life rather then there PR constructed nonsense image. Instead of "Bruce Forsyth" turning up to the christmas party they would just send a rotting, wood wormed broken kitsch clock.
They still haven't given me my name badge. They have given me a standby badge that says 'Jo'. Everybody calls me Jo now and I actually answer to it. Must inform my broadband provider.
On my break. Think about what Josefine said the other day about grandchildren and how it would be great to live near home and be around her parents. I begin to think about how my father will probably pass away before he can meet mine. Fills me with sadness.
Look at my fringe in the window. Looks like an ox bow lake.
Next I see a defeated Jeremy Paxman.
DAY: 18th August 2012
Wake up to the cacophonous noise of multiple babies wailing like some sort of surround sound communal event of suffering, each wail triggers another like a set of sympathetic dominos. A galvanised prison crew uniting in song to mourn the death of their beloved leader. The sound is so intense and builds like some tawdry 80's paracetomol ad.
This housing estate is strange and depressing. The streets and playgrounds are empty but you can hear and feel the heat of unknown lives behind endless gray concrete walls and faceless windows. Thwarted dams at the brink of bursting, water seeping through the cracks. Two nights ago Katarina and I were sitting outside drinking lemon and ginger tea with milk when we heard a married couple argue. The wife called the husband a drunk, chastising him for being out for hours and leaving her with the kids, that its her birthday, that she hates him and was the biggest mistake of her life, that he has drained her and taken all her best years. We were speechless and could only laugh out of our nervousness. The argument had the same beat and rhythm of a soap opera. I never thought these scenes existed. Thinking they were only vomitted out of the pen by some mediocre Coronation Street hack. Perhaps they are magpied out of real life?
Walk to the cornershop to update my tube card. See a tabloid paper depicting a bruised and scarred woman. The story was about a British soldier returning from duty to find out that his wife was having an affair, so he decided to maim her and 'make her ugly' so no man would touch her again.
Walk to the fruit and veg shop to buy the contents of a laughable stir fry. I am wearing shorts and receive strange glances from the shop owner. It is as if my very presence is erasing the moral fortress he has spent a lifetime trying to maintain. What does he think I will be actually doing with the food?
Eat stir fry. Get the 73 from Essex Road to Kings Cross.
At work and I hear my fellow employees talk about the mystery shopper. A person that supposedly comes into your shop and secretly judges you on the presentation of the place, the service and overall mood. They tell us that if the branch is successful we will all get extra cash come wages day. A carrot on a string.
'Jesus is a mystery shopper,
buyer beware.
Like an uninvited stroke.
Descending from the air.'
I walk past a table and can hear Irish accents. Fills me with despair. Two rich Dublin girls sqwark with their gummy mouths, brandishing the letter 'S' like a stuttering socialite snake, Rachel Allen knock offs whose life long ambition is to make the perfect homemade guacamole. It's like they are bred on a farm sponsored by the Irish Rugby Football Union and Debenhams, fodder to the chinless rugby elite and incestous squash players.
I think back on the idea of 'Rich Irish people' and it sounds like an oxymoron. Half pregnant. Sensual Pope.
Walk to the bathroom. Not on lunch break. Bliss. Man walks past and catches me in mid yawn. He stares with arch eyebrows at my features, trying to work out my cryptic facial code. My face is covert braile and his eyes are hands.
I've got debilitating tiredness. Throwing and dragging my body around like veal jogging through water.
I take too long in the bathroom and wonder would anybody notice. I wonder how many people put their dignity on the line each day by saying they shat themselves, just for a few moments more of stolen freedom?
I walk the shop floor, emitting a low whine.
It's so hot I am nearly hallucinating. The kind of weather were you'll accept responsibility for a crime you didn't commit just so you can leave the room. Cool your forehead on the handcuffs.
Talk to the female chef and tell her that the oven she is working with smells like Christmas. She tells me that smell is actually oven cleaner. The spirit of Christmas in a bottle.
Talk to a fellow employee about future plans.I bring up the most common question in job interviews: "Where do you see yourself in 12 months time?" I am intriqued to hear what she will say. You can never say what you really think. You always have to tell your employer what they want to hear. "I see myself here with you Brad, as we are married to twin blonde stunners, who are outside salivating in our matching Ferrari's, as we laugh and engage each other in a never ending high five of perpetual bliss." Never say what you really think. Dead in a big occultist car crash, found bloody in a ditch with a face full of ram sperm. They just don't want to hear it.
Walk past a grief stricken, anorexic Jeremy Clarkson look a like, followed by a bloated, blimp like David Icke. Think about people that actually become celebrity look a likes for hire. Fulfilling? Then started to think about a company that would provide metaphysical look a likes of celebrities instead, depicting their inner state of life rather then there PR constructed nonsense image. Instead of "Bruce Forsyth" turning up to the christmas party they would just send a rotting, wood wormed broken kitsch clock.
They still haven't given me my name badge. They have given me a standby badge that says 'Jo'. Everybody calls me Jo now and I actually answer to it. Must inform my broadband provider.
On my break. Think about what Josefine said the other day about grandchildren and how it would be great to live near home and be around her parents. I begin to think about how my father will probably pass away before he can meet mine. Fills me with sadness.
Look at my fringe in the window. Looks like an ox bow lake.
Next I see a defeated Jeremy Paxman.
Saturday 18 August 2012
DREAM: 16th of August 2012
I am on a bus. Maybe a school bus. I am surrounded by all my past lovers, great and small.Fellini and Radiohead wept. One girl, a rich demented tormentor from college, gets up from her adjacent seat and kisses me on the scalp. I feel guilty, like I am trying to provoke all the once intimate onlookers. The bus lurches on and a Leonard Cohen song prayerfully trickles out of the radio. The tormentor makes an elitist gesture like we two are the only ones in possession of the great mans inner heat. I said a frank "No" and nodded my head in the direction of my right shoulder. My nod was in reference to a sincere girl I was involved with on my travels. She sat quietly and alert. I said that " She knows everything about the Man."A despondent scowl hung from the tormentor's face, like she caught someone else performing her one friend winning party trick. I had my hood up and was sitting beside a man. I was talking aloud to the tormentor but tried not to look at her eyes while I spoke. The man was confused and was unsure to whom I was speaking to. I laughed and assured him that I was speaking to that asbestos aura girl over in that seat and not talking to myself. I jokingly said "Kill" aloud, followed by "Kill him" and looked him dead in the eyes. He laughed but I'm guessing out of nervousness. I'm so good I can even make new friends in my sleep. The bus trundled on. I could hear somebody tell a story about how to survive a heavy rain shower. I listened and didn't agree with this man's point of view. He was so adamant about his rain evading techniques that he forced the bus to stop and we got out to test his theory.
DAY: 17th August 2012
Planes dart accross the sky like a needle and thread administered by an invisible tailor then the pure white lines momentarily fade into hostless spinal columns. I sit barefoot, aware of the sights and sounds of the afternoon. Baby wails, spoon hits the inside of a tea cup, white curtain bellows in the wind, far off childrens cries of euphoria erupt, light reflects off a spiders web, nondescript crockery collide, postman makes his way to and fro. I contemplate making a boiled egg.
Now eating a boiled egg. I think about the collection of words separately. Soft as in the texture, boiled as in the process of preparation and egg as in the object. Strange. Texture, process, object. "Oh hello John, how are you today? Oh not so good Belinda, I am Wet Crying Sad." I try to think of other combinations but fall short.
Elis arrives home and we speak aboout our financial situations. I don't get paid until next Thursday so must survive until then. She is paying for college and is in a similiar predicament. I suggest we pool our money together, share food and such. We speak about the abundant fruit flies and how we could consume them. They must contain fruit somewhere. Just think of them as religious angel raisins. We speak about making a film and how it should revolve around us talking and making tea.
She has a packet of Tim Tam's, the Australian Penguin bars, and I tell her about the trick with a cup of tea. She complains because she doesn't like milk in her tea. I plead with her and say the trick is ruined without it. Like a sweaty, bearded Uri Geller going door to door with a bent soup ladle, pleading for eye contact in order to feel human. She holds the cup aloft and says that if she drinks this cup then this event will be revolutionary. If that constitutes revolution my generation is definitely fucked. We perform the ritual.
Get bus to work. Essex Road stop to Kings Cross station.
Walking on the footpath I hear a man shouting "It's not fair. Bankers are taking all our money and it's not fair. It's just not fair" screaming at the top of his lungs. People stand around and stare, laughing and prodding each other. I notice a policeman enter the scene.
Put on the work uniform and can never button it properly. I make small talk with a fellow co-worker from Wimbledon and ask him how does he button his? He says dryly "from the bottom". Friend No. 1 in the bag.
I find out later that I was actually wearing a woman's shirt. I tell him this to quench his sense of my incompetence and he replies with a nice throwaway "What can you do?" Knowing the battle is lost I mumbled "an ill-conceived sex change perhaps." Not only are we going to be friends but we're going to be best friends.
I stand behind a co-worker and he turns and accidentally hits me in the chest. He immediately apologises and I joke that it really, really hurt. He laughs and I go to shake his hand but he tells me his hands are dirty. I tell him to just look at my hand and then shake his head. Friend No.2 caught in my loving snare.
A manager gives me a few pointers about stocking drinks. He says you must make it look like the stock is overflowing. I tell him I could construct a few mirrors which would give the illusion of abundant corridors. He laughs. Higher level Friend No. 3 feasting from my caressing palm.
Clean a table and overhear a young adults conversation on the phone. Nathan Barleys understudy. He talks about having a Sunday roast. Probably an ironic Sunday roast. On Ash Wednesday. He finds it hard to hide his makeshift Machiavellian contempt. Probably made his millions by inventing an app that tells you were the nearest kravat(that doubles as a heroin sling) shop is located.
Started to face off the fruit section. Another manager approaches and tells me were I am going wrong. I agreed and told him I would do better next time. Choking back the tears. Serious strange fruit.
An employee stands up and ambles about due to the blood rushing to his head. I joke that if you're small then the blood isn't a problem because your head is very close to the ground already. Friend No.4 is bathing in my rejuvenating stream.
I walk around the shop and try to look busy. It's crazy that as humans we have to act out this role. Furrowed brows, eyes scanning, lost in thought, like your trying to work out some elusive equation unconsciously through the use of a dustpan and brush. The Orlando Bloom school of acting. Thousand yard stare, anticipating a phantom sneeze that may never come.
See a newspaper headline saying Pussy Riot won't beg Putin for a pardon. Young Tories are saying British people are lazy and need to get off the arse and help England to become a dominant power again. Vomit in my mouth.
I serve a father and his little daughters. One of the daughters is wearing an elaborate and detailed Where's Wally? map t-shirt. Highly inappropriate. The little tease. Maybe this could be used as a cost effective way to capture paedophiles?
Use the public toilets with the infra red motion sensing flusher. It violently splashed me. Perhaps it mistook me for Henry VIII.
Going to the toilet during a lunch break is probably the only time in human existence when using the toilet feels like a waste of time. I should be doing something more constructive with my precious time. Like checking if the soles of my feet are actually weeping.
Woman walks past and is transfixed by my yoghurt. She really stares at it. Hypnotised. Perhaps her mind is trying to comprehend the object by means of it's shape and the more I eat the contents the more her brain is lost. Phenomenology by means of dairy products.
An insensitive thing to say after an abortion: Ta Dah!
I am logged into a till now but have to use another persons card. Her name appears on the screen as a chef walks past. He says "Michelle is a good name". I told him my parents were hippies.
I clean the table of a family that look like a violent bunch of individuals. The father has a red scar darting down the side of his face. He looks like the type of man that would wallpaper an entire livingroom using just his head. I quickly move on.
I try to hide my yawn so as not to arouse suspicion. But the act of cover up makes my yawn look even stranger. From afar it probably looks like I am going through a growth spasm. Or impersonating a mute lion.
Talk to a co-worker who is studying politics. He is from Brazil and looks like he has never had an ounce of self doubt in his whole life. I feel like my forehead is a polygraph my parents attached to my head and then spent my life lying to me. We speak about the world and I tell him about the man shouting "It's not fair" in the street earlier. How we need to come up with a more productive way of protesting. A lone voice shouting on the street is not good enough. He tells me his plans about becoming a journalist and travelling the world. I get the feeling that he thinks he can hypnotise women, could talk a velvet bra off a ledge.
We prepare to close up the shop, sweep underneath the tables and chairs, wash the windows, preparing the fridge for the morning. Two co-workers speak about an ex-manager who was gay. They imitate him and mince around singing "I'm a Barbie Girl", wrists bent. It's amazing how as human beings sometimes to get by we need to nod our heads and chaperone homophobia and misogyny. They told me its fine to joke about it because the manager didn't know they were doing it, they said they spoke in parables. Just like the bible.
We finish up and play a game of spin the bottle were the winner gets a hug. Spin the bottle for determined priests.
Get the bus home from Kings Cross.
Arrive home. Katarina and Martin are watching a film. We talk about fashion, elephantitis, photography, flying squirrels and God's lack of imagination.
I see that Pussy Riot have been sentenced to two years. My mind darts back to the solitary shouting man on the street.
DAY: 17th August 2012
Planes dart accross the sky like a needle and thread administered by an invisible tailor then the pure white lines momentarily fade into hostless spinal columns. I sit barefoot, aware of the sights and sounds of the afternoon. Baby wails, spoon hits the inside of a tea cup, white curtain bellows in the wind, far off childrens cries of euphoria erupt, light reflects off a spiders web, nondescript crockery collide, postman makes his way to and fro. I contemplate making a boiled egg.
Now eating a boiled egg. I think about the collection of words separately. Soft as in the texture, boiled as in the process of preparation and egg as in the object. Strange. Texture, process, object. "Oh hello John, how are you today? Oh not so good Belinda, I am Wet Crying Sad." I try to think of other combinations but fall short.
Elis arrives home and we speak aboout our financial situations. I don't get paid until next Thursday so must survive until then. She is paying for college and is in a similiar predicament. I suggest we pool our money together, share food and such. We speak about the abundant fruit flies and how we could consume them. They must contain fruit somewhere. Just think of them as religious angel raisins. We speak about making a film and how it should revolve around us talking and making tea.
She has a packet of Tim Tam's, the Australian Penguin bars, and I tell her about the trick with a cup of tea. She complains because she doesn't like milk in her tea. I plead with her and say the trick is ruined without it. Like a sweaty, bearded Uri Geller going door to door with a bent soup ladle, pleading for eye contact in order to feel human. She holds the cup aloft and says that if she drinks this cup then this event will be revolutionary. If that constitutes revolution my generation is definitely fucked. We perform the ritual.
Get bus to work. Essex Road stop to Kings Cross station.
Walking on the footpath I hear a man shouting "It's not fair. Bankers are taking all our money and it's not fair. It's just not fair" screaming at the top of his lungs. People stand around and stare, laughing and prodding each other. I notice a policeman enter the scene.
Put on the work uniform and can never button it properly. I make small talk with a fellow co-worker from Wimbledon and ask him how does he button his? He says dryly "from the bottom". Friend No. 1 in the bag.
I find out later that I was actually wearing a woman's shirt. I tell him this to quench his sense of my incompetence and he replies with a nice throwaway "What can you do?" Knowing the battle is lost I mumbled "an ill-conceived sex change perhaps." Not only are we going to be friends but we're going to be best friends.
I stand behind a co-worker and he turns and accidentally hits me in the chest. He immediately apologises and I joke that it really, really hurt. He laughs and I go to shake his hand but he tells me his hands are dirty. I tell him to just look at my hand and then shake his head. Friend No.2 caught in my loving snare.
A manager gives me a few pointers about stocking drinks. He says you must make it look like the stock is overflowing. I tell him I could construct a few mirrors which would give the illusion of abundant corridors. He laughs. Higher level Friend No. 3 feasting from my caressing palm.
Clean a table and overhear a young adults conversation on the phone. Nathan Barleys understudy. He talks about having a Sunday roast. Probably an ironic Sunday roast. On Ash Wednesday. He finds it hard to hide his makeshift Machiavellian contempt. Probably made his millions by inventing an app that tells you were the nearest kravat(that doubles as a heroin sling) shop is located.
Started to face off the fruit section. Another manager approaches and tells me were I am going wrong. I agreed and told him I would do better next time. Choking back the tears. Serious strange fruit.
An employee stands up and ambles about due to the blood rushing to his head. I joke that if you're small then the blood isn't a problem because your head is very close to the ground already. Friend No.4 is bathing in my rejuvenating stream.
I walk around the shop and try to look busy. It's crazy that as humans we have to act out this role. Furrowed brows, eyes scanning, lost in thought, like your trying to work out some elusive equation unconsciously through the use of a dustpan and brush. The Orlando Bloom school of acting. Thousand yard stare, anticipating a phantom sneeze that may never come.
See a newspaper headline saying Pussy Riot won't beg Putin for a pardon. Young Tories are saying British people are lazy and need to get off the arse and help England to become a dominant power again. Vomit in my mouth.
I serve a father and his little daughters. One of the daughters is wearing an elaborate and detailed Where's Wally? map t-shirt. Highly inappropriate. The little tease. Maybe this could be used as a cost effective way to capture paedophiles?
Use the public toilets with the infra red motion sensing flusher. It violently splashed me. Perhaps it mistook me for Henry VIII.
Going to the toilet during a lunch break is probably the only time in human existence when using the toilet feels like a waste of time. I should be doing something more constructive with my precious time. Like checking if the soles of my feet are actually weeping.
Woman walks past and is transfixed by my yoghurt. She really stares at it. Hypnotised. Perhaps her mind is trying to comprehend the object by means of it's shape and the more I eat the contents the more her brain is lost. Phenomenology by means of dairy products.
An insensitive thing to say after an abortion: Ta Dah!
I am logged into a till now but have to use another persons card. Her name appears on the screen as a chef walks past. He says "Michelle is a good name". I told him my parents were hippies.
I clean the table of a family that look like a violent bunch of individuals. The father has a red scar darting down the side of his face. He looks like the type of man that would wallpaper an entire livingroom using just his head. I quickly move on.
I try to hide my yawn so as not to arouse suspicion. But the act of cover up makes my yawn look even stranger. From afar it probably looks like I am going through a growth spasm. Or impersonating a mute lion.
Talk to a co-worker who is studying politics. He is from Brazil and looks like he has never had an ounce of self doubt in his whole life. I feel like my forehead is a polygraph my parents attached to my head and then spent my life lying to me. We speak about the world and I tell him about the man shouting "It's not fair" in the street earlier. How we need to come up with a more productive way of protesting. A lone voice shouting on the street is not good enough. He tells me his plans about becoming a journalist and travelling the world. I get the feeling that he thinks he can hypnotise women, could talk a velvet bra off a ledge.
We prepare to close up the shop, sweep underneath the tables and chairs, wash the windows, preparing the fridge for the morning. Two co-workers speak about an ex-manager who was gay. They imitate him and mince around singing "I'm a Barbie Girl", wrists bent. It's amazing how as human beings sometimes to get by we need to nod our heads and chaperone homophobia and misogyny. They told me its fine to joke about it because the manager didn't know they were doing it, they said they spoke in parables. Just like the bible.
We finish up and play a game of spin the bottle were the winner gets a hug. Spin the bottle for determined priests.
Get the bus home from Kings Cross.
Arrive home. Katarina and Martin are watching a film. We talk about fashion, elephantitis, photography, flying squirrels and God's lack of imagination.
I see that Pussy Riot have been sentenced to two years. My mind darts back to the solitary shouting man on the street.
DREAM: May
(Don't remember any)
DAY: Working, working, working. Industrial revolution blues. Sausage roll drying up from the inside out.
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