The Existence of 4pm

It was not 4pm; it was later than 4pm, this was apparent. The evidence was varied - the hue of the sky, the chill in the air. The grass was cold, becoming damp.
(you are served food at the juncture whereby your hunger is no longer existent, the nights are drawing in, wind and whisky, other observable phenomenon)
We had to hurry up and play some more before the driver came to collect the apparatus. We sensed his arrival to be imminent.
Enjoyment of the apparatus within the preallocated time-frame was of paramount importance. It could not be underplayed or understated.
(his most inspired thoughts arrived on the verge of slumber)
Autumn occurred. Quite suddenly. He began striving to achieve an economy with regard to speech and actions.

The Configuration of the Hiccup

A malicious jest is
the inevitability of autumn
like she is following
advanced protocols
the rest of us
are not privy to.

Leith

She asked me if I wanted another beer and I indicated that I didn't, but without much enthusiasm. The tremor of hysteria in her voice was impossible to ignore. And yet we would both ignore it; we were actors playing out the roles of two people who were fond of one another.

She Hated the Tentative, Boyish Way he would Vie for her Affections

We were sitting on the North pier. Men were sanding the deck of a boat. I was watching the shimmering patterns of the water. A woman was walking her dog on the beach. Middle aged and elderly people were sitting around us, also waiting for the boat. A couple walked by. We had spoken to them last night in the bar. I waved and called out to them. I think they didn't notice us. Or possibly they just ignored us but that seemed out of character.
"Most people don't appreciate what they've got. They don't appreciate what's at hand," a woman on the bench beside us was saying. It was warm and sunny with a light breeze. Liebe yawned. I liked this sound. The breeze rippled the patterns of the water. I asked Liebe if her head still hurt. She didn't understand. Then she understood and said that her head was better now. Then she made some nonsensical sounds as she was wont to do in those days. She put her sunglasses on and began singing. I could feel the warmth of the sun on my skin. And then the breeze. Sometimes I felt as if I hated everyone. Then, other times, a more amiable disposition would come over me.

An Alien Heat

Yesterday's heat
was absolutely
fucking stifling.
A sick
jungle heat.
An alien heat.
Birds
screeching in pain. Skies
all swollen
grey.

I had to go out
to buy cold beer
from the store. I
had to look people
in the eye and
they knew
I was sick and lonely and confused.

Scaffolding Dismantled

An undeniable implosion
A cherished odour stolen
by immature whims
and a drastic ennui

# 4

I liked to admire her arm. Her arm was slender towards the wrist yet nicely full towards the forearm. Little blue veins were visible at the inner wrist, a royal blue to contrast the delicate whitness of her skin. She held up her arm for me time and time again and then hid it when she became tired or self-conscious.

Further and Further Away II

He loved the way each moment gave way to the next one. There, that was a lie, it was fucking shite most of the time, he hated it. It was awkward and he fucking hated it. I'm talking about life. His experience of existing, anyway. At times it was just too awful it was fucking unreal man. Just everyday things, banal things, the weight of it fucking all.
He felt as if he was getting good results but he was working blind. Which sometimes felt counter-intuitive. But sometimes he felt that there must be a a reason for his instinctive adoption of this approach.
He was walking through a field with his dog. The dog was running on ahead, inquisitive as always. It was a foggy afternoon, I remember that.

Perspectives

Incriminated by his feverish grin
as soon as I meet her
commence self-sabotage
the evaporation of time
an amber lit fog
in June, in autumn

Trailing

A dripping maroon sadness
ensconced
in summer mist, stuff
that billows.
Refunded orgasms,
refuted sadness
trailing
a dismal watercolour.
The sky is a turd
lost beneath a stagnant heat.

Flowers, drawn

He watched in horror
as she drew flowers
and a rainbow and
she has to use the shower
her water
is off
she has to

Nearer

It wasn't time to catch the bus yet. It was time to smell the pillow to check if it still smelled of her. He would go for the next one.
It did smell of her still. He pressed his face deep against the cool red fabric and inhaled. Then he began writhing around on his back, the pillow pressed firmly against his face as he stifled an anguished howl. He was now addicted to her musk.
He would go downstairs, he would pour a glass of wine. It wasn't time to catch the bus yet.

Near

Her deliriously unspooling eyes
are ghostly cameras
tracing
my waning
hard-on.

Now I will mull things over for another three years.

Further and Further Away

He had been lambasted for his utter adoration of the USA but that was alright, that was just fine. He sipped from a can of Lilt as he drove and contemplated Maria, the girl he was going to visit. He was going, ostensibly, to help her fill out some employment forms so that she might find some honest work within this honourable and glorious nation, bonny Scotland.
God how he loved her thighs they were glorious and he loved her breasts anaw. He gunned the accelerator and emitted a wild whooping sound. He did enjoy the summer months. Over the winter he was often plagued with a feeling of insurmountable sadness and unending lethargy. But it was summer now and he was going to see her.
He was going to see her now, he was going to see Maria. It was acutely nerve-racking. He was sober and he found it difficult to engage with other people when he was sober, lacking that comfortable shield of alcohol induced stupefaction. But ye couldnae just go about pissed out yer skull the whole time. That kind of behaviour was somewhat frowned upon. Ye had to make an effort, to be earnest.
He was getting deeper into the city now, closer to the street where her flat was situated. It was 7:30pm. The sky was yellow. He wasn't sure how he felt.

He was standing outside her door. At least he thought it might be her door. Potentially it was her door. He couldn't remember specifically which one it was. He couldn't say for sure. He took his phone out of his pocket. He dialled her number. He looked up at the windows, all the windows above. She was behind one of them. Waiting for him.
She answered the phone and then she was at the window, smiling. The gentle croak of her voice was exquisite. It sounded like the wind gently stirring autumn leaves. It made him want to squeal a bit. He wanted to sit alone in a room and contemplate the unlimited possibilities for self-expression.

He was inside now, in her room. With her. There were vinyl LPs affixed to the wall by way of decoration. There was a single bed in one corner, a desk with laptop computer in the opposite corner.
What happens now he wondered and she didn't seem too sure herself.
Maybe nothing. Maybe everything.

Asleep

He was nervous because he wanted it so bad and the fact of this was liable to fuck him up for sure, he knew this.
He knows this, she knows this, he knows this.
Reality is vicious.
YA CUNT REALITY WIS AWFUL SURELY TO FUCK IT WISNAE MEANT TO FEEL THIS BAD
Aye, aye it wis, momentarily, but the the bad moments passed and ye were back on an even keel. I'm a writer and this is my latest piece.

Crawl into the Traps that You Set for Yourself

He was walking daft as he was bursting on a pish.

The unspoken consensus of nonchalance and knowledge.

A bit of piss seeped out into his jeans.

The Lithuanian girl drifted past on rollerskates.

He had seen her before.

Further

He was sitting on a wooden dining chair. He didnae look too good. He was sitting slightly apart from them. Someone asked him if he wanted a glass of water. He said that he didn't want anything. I was thinking that he should drink some water, or drink something. He didn't look very good at all.
Presently he came to speak. Someone asked him his name. He told us his name. Someone asked him how he had ended up here. He wasn't sure. It seemed he didn't know anyone here. They wanted him to leave. For my part I didn't mind, I didn't care what he did. He seemed okay to me.

Spread

He had set up a shared database with instructions that she should make notes on her every infidelity and upload them. Detailed annotations were heavily encouraged. He would check it every few weeks or so, preferably on an overcast weekday afternoon.

Severe

The snide remark had been noted; she would reserve it now and it could not be retracted. She would harbour it alright. Now it would be all the quiet resentment she so relished. Learned indignation and pretended victimisation.
The exchange had been so subtle it was impossible for him to do anything to rectify the situation. Like apologise for instance. She would merely pretend an ignorance. It was a very clever technique and afforded her infinite opportunity for aloof indignation.
The dog was laying in the couch. It squinted its head at him as he walked past, wondering perhaps if it was time to go for a walk. He held its gaze for a moment and it swished its tail softly. It wasn't time to go for a walk.

Avoidance

He set the can of beer down. All this silly self-destruction. It was inane and there would be no fucking more of it. He would go out. He would take the dog out.
At that moment the dog padded through and gazed at him beseechingly, swishing its tail.
- What? What is it? You want to go out?
The dog leapt at him, its tail swishing vigorously now. He went to the porch and put on his boots, fetched the dog's lead.
It was a cold day but clear and sunny. The ground was still damp from a previous rainfall. The dog ran on ahead, grinning wildly. He followed it down into the woods where it retrieved a stick and tried to bring it to him. He jumped back, conscious of the fact he was wearing his good jeans which he intended to wear later when he went out.
- Get away frae me! he squealed, flapping his hands in a decidedly pantomimic manner. Any observers might conclude that he was deranged.
He was going out tonight to meet Laura and he didn't want to show up pished, wearing muddy jeans. Fuck sake. One needs to maintain a presentable appearance in terms of both dress and mental co- what was the word, cohesion? I mean he wanted to seem like he was with it, not pished out his skull like some feckless tragedy.
The dog returned with another stick and he ushered it away again. Fuck sake. The dog was determined to foil his attempts to maintain a presentable appearance. Maybe the dog was jealous of Laura, of the time he spent with her and no with the dog. That was one line of speculation. A fairly preposterous one albeit.
They came to a bridge. A small one, but bridges perturbed the dog whatever their size. This one granted safe passage across a burn that was particularly wild today following all the recent rainfall. The dog gingerly made its way across, tentative bastard. And of course at the other side it wanted to be petted and reassured. He stepped back to the middle of the bridge, urging the dog away.
- Beat it ya radge, he suggested. Go on, go, look, see over there. He pointed vaguely behind the dog and it spun around to see what phenomenon it was being urged to regard.

Animal Law

The economic recession continued to worsen, unemployment reaching unprecedented highs.

All of a sudden the populace stopped spending money, staying indoors to eat whatever little food they had left. Consumerism suddenly ceased as if by a mass unspoken consensus.

It wasn't long before looting and rioting broke out. Widespread fear, hysteria and violence erupted.

And it wasn't too long after that that civilised society collapsed and a primitive animal law was established.

Notes from the front line by a lonely coward endeavouring to live in between the empty spaces of this life

He couldn't write under these conditions. He had a couple of ideas. Walking past the bars alone, too timid to venture inside any of them. That time in India he had spent the day alone, a draining gulf of a day.

He had walked to the beach. He felt a vague yen to swim. But he didn't go swimming because there was no-one to watch his stuff and he didn't trust anyone. He sat on the beach and a wizened old woman approached him, offered to massage his feet. Brought him a Coke. He watched the waves.

He went for lunch at a restaurant near the beach. I can't remember what he ordered to eat. He drank two beers, maybe three, which afforded him a brief jolt of euphoria. But then that passed and he felt quite deflated, probably worse than before.

He went back to the room and tried to write something and then masturbated. A weak, jittery orgasm. He felt awful. He felt worse than ever. He went out and maundered around the pointless afternoon streets. A sublime weight over him. His eyes watered, his soul was drowsy, he was unable to move correctly.

He met his friend later that night and they went for dinner. He barely spoke a word. There was little worth saying.
They walked the night streets and he sipped from a Pepsi bottle liberally dosed with cheap Scotch. He felt remarkable. He began lashing out at his friend in deranged violent glee. Life was spectacular.

Weird Notes II

The correct length of time for the procedure had to be determined. That was imperative. He would meet her at the arranged juncture.
She glanced at him with a look akin to scorn.
Reality was an impossible puzzle that had to be pieced together.
The next task had to be commissioned.
He was just trying. Trying to mind his own business.
But it felt as if something or other had a vested interest in his misfortune and discomfort. It wis a perpetual drag.
Also quite perplexing!

Weird Notes

'Admit it! Admit what you did!' the woman was shrieking.
'I never did that, I would never do that the man,' was trying to explain in a panick.

'Holding, stroking, touching, feeling' the Filipino man sang repeatedly, a saccharine smile. The dog groaned.

He was being too emphatic and the assembly found this to be distasteful.

The girl allowed coffee to overspill the rim of the mug as she overfilled it... She felt herself flinching in anticipation of the blow to the back of the head she would receive.

He had went frigid. He was turned off. Reality was to blame.

'Kin Ah have a shandy, aye?'
'Ye wantin' a shandy, aye?'
'Aye.'
'No the now.'

Intermittent mirth.

The Lithuanian girl drifted past on rollerskates, smiling coyly.

He was sitting slightly apart from them

'MAN BOUGHT HEROIN TO HELP HIM SLEEP' the headline read and they were all commenting upon it. He was sitting slightly apart from them. He didn't feel like commenting upon it. It seemed to him like the sort of preposterous thing he might even do.
'Is he wanting a beer?' one of them was heard to ponder.
'Naw, he's got one.'
So they were referring to him in the third person now. An interesting development for sure. A curious development. But apt; he felt very distant and detached from them, from himself. He gazed in an unfocused way at the rows of gleaming bottles behind the bar.
He felt aggrieved. One of his best pals was now involved with a lassie he had been seeing. A complaint should be registered somehow, some sort of arbitration needed to occur.
Sometimes he tried to joke and it didn't come out right and people wondered what it was if it was a joke or if it was serious and he himself wondered as well as if there could be some heretofore unconsidered truth manifest beneath the jocular façade.
His distance from the others was causing discomfort for all concerned. He tried desperately to think of something to say. He couldn't meet anyone's eye and his limbs tingled. It was as if his skeleton sought to quit his body.
This was bad. He didn't want to be here amidst these people. With their schemes, gestures, symbols. Everything was inscrutably codified.
He had bought his own beer on account of the fact that nae cunt had seen fit to furnish him with one. So ye bought yer ain fucking beer.
These cunts referring to him in the third person man he should just get fucking out of here right now.
Although it was partly his fault he supposed. He was a morose cunt if the truth be known, if you wanted to know the truth then this was it. This was the regrettable fact of the matter.
He couldn't accept the collective weight of everyone's gaze which gathered more force the longer he avoided it.
Maybe he should just scoop his beer and discreetly quit the premises. He wondered what he would do.

Untitled Notebook Fragment II

Unable to sleep he attempted to hallucinate the smell of her pussy, that sweet acrid stench. He was pressing his head against the pillows and yearning for a girl he had met in the past.
Sleep was unlikely to be forthcoming; he had taken a nap at the unconventional time of 9pm for a couple of stupid broken lazy hours, half dozing blinded by the light and haunted by the awareness that he hadn't let the bath water away.
He was thinking of the girl that he had met in the past, the past ie. the previous weekend.
Some women are strange. They seem interested and then they suddenly change their minds or else they are only pretending or playing games or some such cruel whimsy. And he had thought that this was the case with this girl maybe. But she had maintained a correspondence with him and things looked promising apart from the fact that she fucking had a boyfriend fuck sake why is nothing is this damn fucking life ever straightforward?
He felt such immense pity for himself. Not really. Actually, he felt okay, pretty detached really, and this detachment felt okay. Especially in comparison with the bouts of anxiety and existential dread he had endured that summer. Detachment felt much better. And hell, he even had moments where he felt something, some sort of vague joy or optimism or enthusiasm. He wisnae too normal he supposed. Something of a navel gazer as this piece of writing likely indicates.

A Formal Disintegration

Now that she was distant he could safely yearn for her again, or some abstract ideal of her, comfortably unattainable. He was moving forward, shedding fleeting encounters, unencumbered, disdainful of the associations borne of past past encounters with people, places, objects, phenomenon.
He feels the universe moving all around him in tranquil tedium and predictability and lapses into a serene doze.

The Comedian

Everyone is ill, everyone is medicated, everyone is laughing hysterically at the vulgar and idiotic comedian.
Cameramen lean in to capture the crudely grinning American faces, symptoms of a sublime disease.

Contrived Authenticity

As was the case with most intellectuals, he was completely ineffectual. He needed all sorts of wee tricks and gimmicks to get him steamed up, to help him make up his mind. But he got there eventually. He would become vaguely excited, animated, increasingly inane. But this new animation was liable to depart at any minute, leaving him deflated and debilitated by his own effeteness once again.

The music casts shadows and magic spells, evokes damply cool hidden areas of deep summer forests.
Tenuous scaffoldings of reality, of social consensus.
She looked over at someone shouting.
She looked at the clock on the wall.

Someone is climbing the stairs, very gradually.
A wound that refuses to heal. The persistence
of elemental conditions. Brilliant moonlight.
Maroon sneakers stepping on ice.
The sudden transparency of her motivations.
The sprawling webs of her desires.
Stroking a cadaverous face, gaze fixed towards a void.
Acid jazz, rainswept streets, urban twilight.

His naivety was partially feigned in a bid to avoid facing up to certain unwelcome facts he supposed he might otherwise find himself facing.

Untitled Notebook Fragment

The various devices whirred and clicked, made other sounds. He felt bored so he attempted to jerk off yet couldn't get hard. People wondered why he was so quiet. He didn't know, couldn't provide an answer to that.
As dawn broke it occurred to him that he had always felt stifled by inanity of various kinds. It was the consensus of idiocy he found distasteful.
The machinery made its sounds and tried to jack off again, found he couldn't. Sometimes he felt he was being wrested free of his corporeal body. He had read about this and supposed it was merely disassociation.
But things were going well, all in all. All in all, he was getting better. It was all about pace and rhythm. He was getting there.