Monday 31 January 2011

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.

Wednesday 19 January 2011

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.
 
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