lost: brown hoodie, blue v-neck

i spent a long time looking at photos on facebook dated 2006

they may have been taken before

was 2006 the year we all got facebook accounts and transferred our photos from myspace?

seems so long ago

2005 was, maybe, a good year in some way

in one of the pictures i am sitting on my friend's bed

reading a zine we made

the angle is skewed

Initial Encounters That Would Later Be Referred To

when i first met you
my friend said we needed to wait
you were alone
crossing the road, smiling
and my brain said to itself
the smile is nervous and shy
and perhaps melancholic
and i found that comforting

the next time, after you left
i told a mutual friend
your voice was strangely low
because i was picking faults
or drunk
or making conversation
i would tell you at a later date anyway
which made me feel like less of a prick

then you stood behind me
at maumoniats in a black and white hat
and i turned around and you smiled
and said you were going to the
house show later, when i asked
we talked a lot that night about
awkward conversations
and you were worried you were keeping
me from socialising
but i already quite liked you
and it made me happy when
someone asked if we were actually going out
when we told him we had never met before

i don't think i'll get a twitter account

what should i call my twitter account?

should i get a twitter account?

Saints on Wikipedia

St. Anthony
Patronage: lost articles; lower animals; Mail; oppressed people; poor people; Portugal; seekers of lost articles; travel hostesses

St. Basil
Patronage: Hospital administrators, Reformers, Monks, Education, Exorcism

St. Catherine
Patronage: Unmarried girls

St. David
Patronage: Vegetarians; poets

St. Elmo
Patronage: colic in children, intestinal ailments and diseases, cramps

St. Fabian
Birth name: Fabianus

St. Giles
Patronage: fear of night; forests; hermits; lepers; mental illness; noctiphobics; outcasts; poor people

St. Helena
Patronage: difficult marriages; divorced people

St. Isidore
Patronage: The internet

St. Jude
Patronage: lost causes; desperate people

St. Kyriaki
"As she was about to be decapitated, she started praying to God. That was the last thing that she ever did. At the time of her death she was 21 years old."

St. Louis
Patronage: France, French monarchy; hairdressers; passementiers

St. Methodius
Patronage: Ecumenism

St. Ninian
"Nothing is known about his teachings"

St. Olaf
Patronage: carvers; difficult marriage; kings

St. Pancras
"Pancras withdrew to a cave in Pontus where he was discovered by Saint Peter and was sent to Sicily in the year 40 to be the first Bishop of Tauromenium (the modern Taormina). There he met his death by stoning at the hands of pagan opponents of the new religion."

St. Quirinus
Patronage: invoked against the bubonic plague, smallpox, and gout; afflictions associated with the legs, feet, ears; paralysis; ulcers; goiter; skin conditions; diseases affecting cattle and horses

St. Rumbold
Attributes: Depicted as ... a bearded man with a hoe lying under his feet. He may also be shown murdered near a coffer of money.

St. Seiya
"Seiya is sent to the Sanctuary in Greece to become the Pegasus Saint. After six years, Seiya becomes the Pegasus Saint and returns to Japan to find his older sister. Because his sister disappeared the same day Seiya went to the Sanctuary, Saori Kido, the granddaughter of the person who sent all the orphans to train, makes a deal with him to go to fight in a tournament called the Galaxian Wars, where the orphans who survived and became Bronze Saints must fight to win the most powerful Cloth: The Sagittarius Gold Cloth. If Seiya goes to compete there and wins, Saori would start a search to find Seiya's sister."

St. Tail
"The first seven dubbed episodes were loosely based on the original dialogue and, perhaps in an act of political correctness, removed references to God. (This is especially awkward because the story follows students in a private religious school, and because Saint Tail's stealing is sinful to her religion, she always asks for God's forgiveness before a caper)."

St. Ursula
"The Huns shot Ursula dead"

St. Vitus
Patronage: actors; comedians; dancers; dogs; epilepsy; oversleeping

St. Wenceslaus
"There are many legends about King Wenceslaus. An old one claims a huge army of knights sleep inside Blaník, a mountain in the Czech Republic. The knights will awake and under the command of St. Wenceslaus and bring aid to the Czech people when they face ultimate danger"

St. Xenia
"She possessed a deep humility, accounting herself the worst and most sinful of all."

St. Yves
Patronage: Brittany, lawyers, abandoned children

St. Zeno
"According to legend he was stolen at birth and briefly replaced by a demonic changeling. One story relates that Saint Zeno, one day fishing on the banks of the Adige, which he did in order to feed himself (rather than as recreation), saw a peasant crossing the river in a horse and cart. The horses began to get strangely skittish. Zeno, believing this to be the work of the devil, made the sign of the cross, and the horses calmed down."

I just built a bed with my bare bastard hands.
I am now sitting on the bed.
This is the first time my computer has experienced the internet in a long time.



I need a desk.

Drafts - 4 messages

I ate porridge
I drank coffee
I left the house
I went to the library
I used the internet
I felt hostile towards the internet for wasting my time
The internet made me feel small and worthless
I went to the beach
I didn't know what I was doing
I got on a bus
I got off a bus
I walked through a country park
I walked through a farm
I walked up onto the downs
I walked to ditchling beacon
I watched everything for a long time
I could see where I used to work
I went back to the library


Every time I hang out
with groups of people
I remember how much I
like to be alone
I start to crave a simple
life in a bungalow
somewhere
I mean, i don't hate
people really
I don't mind talking
one-to-one with someone
and I like meeting new people
but to meet new people
you have to hang out
with more than
one person
and most of the time
i am just not willing to do that


there is a man that is always at the library
i know he doesn't work there
because if he did he would have been fired by now
he looks a bit like larry david with psoriasis
and less well kept
he always wears the same cap and is reading the guardian 80% of the time
I stood next to him at sainsbury's once
it was the first time i had seen him up close and outside the library
his shopping consisted of 'basics' corned beef, baked beans and a chocolate bar
felt like his soul was laid out on the conveyor belt


"Anterior to conventional means of expression, which reveal my thoughts to others already, for both myself and them, meanings are provided for each sign, and which in this sense do not give rise to genuine communication at all, we must, as we shall see, recognise a primary process of signification in which the thing expressed does not exist apart from the expression, and in which the signs themselves induce their significance externally."

young people are boring.

Following the arrows carved with
‘public footpath’
holding blind faith in
West Sussex County Council.
Through a field of yellow grass
as if someone had just taken off
a huge tarpaulin. Next to a golf course
I imitate the sound of a club
hitting a ball, using my tongue
and the roof of my mouth.
The ‘tcluck’ echoes over the field.

A manor house appears
unexpectedly, I think
must be used in films
and stare a while
until I leave to piss in a bush.

A dog running in circles,
agitated, confused, approaching
why am I there? It wants to know
searching for an answer
from its owner. but its
owner just ignores me.
He seems like he is working.

this is not worth reading.

been lying on the floor, reading bobbie ann mason's 'love life' and listening to mid-west emo.

writing.

not writing.

hastings' pier burnt down, adding to the towns bleak seaside-town character.

as germans might say, hastings is where you would bury your dog.

i saw a dog riding a skateboard today.

he seemed happy.

everyone who saw the dog seemed happy.

people who saw the dog carried on walking, looking back at the dog over their shoulders, sometimes walking backwards with big grins, sharing their grins with loved ones or strangers in recognition of a dog riding a skateboard.


when the weather is nice a man across the road sit outside his front door in a fold-out garden chair, with a portable radio on the table and a tankard.

once i saw him launch out of his fold-out garden chair to stroke a passing cat, but the cat ran away.

saw rvivr the other day.

there was a terrible imbroglio that keeps on flashing back in my mind.

i was just a witness.

still, keep on replaying it, thinking 'oh no', sometimes swearing out loud at passing thoughts.

I Am Very Likable

I am respectful of everyone.

I remember that everyone I'm interacting with is human, too.

I do things for other people, even if I don't know them.

I keep my promises.

I learn and use everybody's name.

I smile a lot.

I am myself.

drunk poem

Late train to Hades

Feet raised, eyes closed
We are always descending
A plateau? No.
We are always descending
Feet risen, a forbidden position
Not totally unaccustomed (you know this from sleep)
to always be descending

Dear DJ

Hello. This is the picture I promised you. I'm sorry it's not very good. I had the flash on and didn't realise. And after that I was just embarrassed. I hope you are feeling better about Dallas. Book is going well. I am at 50 pages in notebook form and about 1/3 through synopsis.

Celebrity Art Party

Questionnaire

1. How many times have you sworn since tuesday?
   
2. Have you ever lain in bed at night unable to stop thinking about something utterly embarrassing you did that day, occasionally reprimanding yourself out-loud?
   
3. Gliding across a dance floor, were those shoes a bad choice?
   
4. Are we all failed actors, unless we are successful actors?
   
5. What do you think of Julia and Dave?
   
6. Do you think it's going to burn all by itself?
   
7. How're we gonna get there? Take a train?
   
8. Enjoying your summer holiday, Iris?
   
9. But you obtain moral satisfaction from your work?
   
10. Delicious. Am I the first customer?
    
11. Do you take precautions in locking up the truck?
    
12. Could I sit on the veranda?
    
13. Were you the one who broke it?
    
14. She stood on a pedestal scanning the ocean?
    
15. Are shopping center's to towns, what cathedrals are to city's?
    
16. Are you walking back?
    
17. What does she do for breakfast?
    
18. Is it okay if I stay for a week or more?
    
19. 10 years in a movie what does it all mean?
    
20. Where will you ever arrive at?

Hi,

The latest issue of WTF PWM is up. The reason I tell you is that I have a story in it. Go and read it, it is very funny.

I have been writing some 'nature' poems recently. I was thinking of printing them as a chapbook or something and calling it 'South Downs Syndrome', but I probably won't. I'll probably just post them on here in like a week or something. [edit: did this, then decided they weren't very good. new regret.]

Also, I had a story rejected recently. In the rejection email they said "While I thought there was some good writing and observations in the piece I thought it lack any real incident." Is this what people mean when they say "form without substance"? If you would like to read a story where nothing happens then get in touch and we can make those dreams of yours a reality.

Thanks.

Sometimes I Read

A Goalie’s Anxiety at The Penalty Kick

I bought this from a second hand book shop in Balham the day England lost 4 – 1 to Germany in the Football World Cup. The shop keeper laughed out loud when he saw the title of the book. I turned to my friend who had taken me to the book shop and made a face as if to say, “get a load of this guy,” (although maybe not because I don’t think I’ve ever used that phrase). My friend asked me where I had heard of the book, after he read the synopsis on the back. Later we would discuss how the cover looks like the cover of an Adrian Mole book. It is a 1978 paperback edition, published by Quartet. As far as I can make out from their website, they have not reprinted it*.

On the back, the book is compared to L’Etranger. It’s an easy comparison to make. Both are short novels that deal with existential alienation and murder. But whereas Camus seems concerned with motive and consequence as well as alienation, Handke seems solely preoccupied with the emotional isolation of an ex-goal keeper, now murderer, Bloch. Bloch seems to have more in common with Michel Poiccard in Goddard’s A Bout De Souffle than Mersault.

Bloch seems to suffer from some sort of 'Depersonalisation Syndrome'. Handke combines Bloch’s inner thoughts and the third-person narration of the book to emphasise this. Here is an excerpt from towards the end of the books, where Handke makes use of Wingdings, or whatever the pre-Microsoft equivalent of Wingdings is:
“He repeated the look from left to right; this look seemed to him like reading. He saw a “wardrobe”, “then” “a” “waste-paper-basket”, “then” “a” “curtain”; while looking from right to left, however, he saw [chair], next to the [table].” etc...

* * *

The same day I bought the book, my friend and I went to a shop called Clapham Books. There was a shelf of Penguin’s ‘Great Ideas’ series. My friend made a comment which could have been, “Fucking love these.” I pointed to a copy of George Orwell’s Cigarette’s vs. Books and said “Yeah, this is really good.” Or something to that effect. He said, “I haven’t read this one.” I said, “No, I meant the cover,” as if that was what we were talking about all along. This moment has crossed my mind perhaps every day since then.

*Amazon tells me that Farrar Straus Giroux published the book in 2007

A short story neither by me nor translated by me, but that I really like and hope you like as well.

TRUDE MARSTEIN

Deep Need – Instant Nausea

Some sad human beings keep pumping the jukebox with money and putting on lousy music. Her glass is empty. He still has three or four centimetres left. For every beer she has drunk she has had to wait until he has finished his and each of them paid for their own beer each time. She cannot remember if they have had three or four large beers. “Have we had three or four beers?” she asks. “I’ve only had three,” he says. “So you must have had four.” She has long come to terms with his chat up line – “Do you come here often?” – but now it is irritating her again. She thought that he was being wry, that he was playing on the cliché, but he wasn’t. He was perfectly serious and waited for an answer and she had to say, “No, not that often.” She doesn’t feel like another beer, she can’t afford it, and she doesn’t feel in the least like sitting and talking to him; everything has been said, the conversation is going nowhere, And the last thing he said was that he liked the sounds in the bar. Must be compassion, she thinks to herself, but she can’t even muster that for the music. The simplest thing would be to say, “Let’s have another beer”; not only would it be easier to say than “Let’s go, shall we?”, but it would be easier than sitting there one second longer with an empty glass. “Shall we have another beer?” she says in a suitably interested tone of voice; she looks at him as she speaks, but then at once coolly looks away. “No, I’m just so tired,” he says with a smile. “I can’t manage another beer.” And then he begins to tell her about his nephew. Tells her that the boy could read fluently when he was four and now by the age of eight he reads Knut Hamsun. He’s an obnoxious boy, he says. She laughs, not out loud; she forms a broad smile with her mouth and forces air through her nose twice. He doesn’t laugh. She cannot fathom why he won’t have another beer. It crosses her mind that she has to do the dishes before going to bed. He suggests going to the cinema tomorrow. “Maybe,” she says. “I promised I’d go and see my father. I’ll ring you.” The barman comes to take away the dead glasses. They get up and go out. He stands outside with his hands in his jacket pockets. “It’s quite early still,” he says. “Yes, it is,” she says. “Do you like listening to music?” he asks. “Would you like to come to my place and listen to some music?” She hesitates for a few seconds, but without actually giving it much thought she looks at him, smiles and says, “Yes.” They start to walk. “Shall we take a taxi?” she says. “No, let’s walk,” he says. “It’s not that far.” She is wearing new shoes and they are beginning to chafe. He walks at an abnormally fast pace. Once he is almost run over because he charges across the road without stopping to look. Despite walking so fast, he talks all the way to his flat, first of all about social issues: about the advantages and disadvantages of immigration, about whether prostitution should be legalised or not and about the quality of Norwegian kindergartens vis-à-vis Swedish ones. Then he talks about himself, about the jobs he has had and his plans for the future. She has more than enough to deal with just keeping up with him and is quite out of breath. It is all she can do to say “Uh-huh” and “uh?” “You’re a bit shy, you are,” he says with a smile over his shoulder. “No, I’m not,” she says. “Perhaps you’re just not very talkative,” he says. Her heels hurt. It feels as if the blisters have burst now. He practically stops dead in his tracks in front of a door. “This is where I live,” he says. The key is already in his hand; he unlocks the door and goes in ahead of her. She looks at his back as they go up the stairs. He lives on the fourth floor and neither of them says a word. He has quite a cute bum, but his trousers are not up to much. She is not sure that she actually wants to sleep with him. In the hall she bends down to undo the laces of her shoes. “Please take off your shoes,” he says. He opens a door. “Here’s the bedroom,” he says. She can feel a pee coming on. The bed is quite narrow. There is a magazine on the bedside table. “It’s a bit messy,” he says. Two or three items of clothing hang over a chair. She stands there with her arms crossed, her weight on one leg and her head thrust upwards; she can feel that her sweater has ridden up and her stomach is visible. I need to pee first, she thinks. The bed wear is flowery, a pastel shade and the duvet nicely folded over. He leaves the room. She follows him. “This is the sitting-room,” he says. The walls are a burgundy red. There are green plants and pleated yellow lampshades, with reproductions of Van Gogh and Munch on the walls. He waves his hand towards the stereo system and three shelves of CDs. “I spend much too much money on music,” he says. Now a whisky, she thinks, a whisky first. “Where’s the loo?” she asks. Not content with pointing to the door, he goes right over and opens it, gestures with his arm into the bathroom as if showing her around. On the edge of the bath there are glass jars of pink bath salts and round, light-blue capsules of bath oils. Towels, also pastel-coloured, are arranged in neat piles on the shelves according to size. She has a pee a cleans herself carefully with moistened toilet paper. The floor is spotless; there isn’t a hair or any dust to be seen. She kneels down and peers under the bench; nothing to be seen there, either. There are cans of hairspray and bottles of moisturising cream on the shelf under the mirror. When she comes out, there is a CD playing. She asks what it is, but she has never heard of the music and she takes an immediate dislike to it. There is a diploma hanging on the wall, black letters on mint green paper; the paper looks old and faded. She reads it. It is from 1979, with his name on, third prize in downhill skiing. “I beat my brother,” he says. “We were competitive about everything. HE was the eldest and always came on top in everything. He was more popular than me, better at school and generally better at sport. But that time I won.” He points to the diploma. “My brother had a cold and came fifth,” he says. He moves something from the sitting-room table. “He had more luck with girls, too. I hated him.” He comes over to her. He is carrying a bowl with a spoon in. There is something brown in it and it has set; chocolate pudding perhaps. “When he died I realised that I didn’t hate him that much,” he says. “But it was absolutely fine that he was dead.” He goes to the kitchen. She hears him putting the bowl down on the steel sink unit before returning. “When did your brother die?” she says. “In April,” he says. He goes over to the sofa and starts arranging the cushions, systematically; he gently pats the square cushions into position, working from one end to the other. Then he goes to the toilet. She wonders whether she should sit on the sofa, waits a little, remains standing and then looks at the CDs. He returns so quickly that without thinking she says, “Have you already been?” He walks past her and positions himself on the other side. “He had dreadful taste in music, he says, “but he would never admit it. I played in a band for a few years, but I’ve given up.” On the shelf above the CDs there is a photograph framed in glass and held with clips, resting against a brass candlestick. Three pale, skinny boys with unnaturally twisted limps lying on their backs on a carpet. “The one in the middle is my son,” he says. “He’s got cerebral palsy. He lives in Tromso. I haven’t seen him for eight months, He’ll recognise me when we meet.” HE puts two glasses down on the sitting-room table. “Would you like a glass of Coke?” he asks. She says, “Yes please,” and moves toward the sofa to sit down. He goes into the kitchen and returns with a large bottle of Coca-Cola and sits down in an armchair. He fills the glasses, passes one over to her, lifts the other one up and, while looking at the wall, holds it in his hand without drinking from it. Set in one wall is a closed door. “What’s in there?” she asks, pointing. “My sister’s room,” he says. “We share the flat. She’s not here right now.” “When will she come home?” she asks. “Not until tomorrow,” he says. “Now I can understand the hairspray and the skin cream in the bathroom better,” she says, smiling. “I’m not one for one-night stands,” he says. “I like to get to know a girl before I go to bed with her.” She looks at him, doesn’t say a word. “If that’s fine by you,” he says, “that we don’t sleep with each other.” He looks at her. “Of course,” she says. “I hadn’t thought about it, either.” “No, of course not,” he says. “But it would be nice if you would stay the night.” She nods, smiles, takes a swig of the Coke. “You’re good to talk to,” he says, smiling. “And you’re good-looking.” He knocks back the whole glass in one and puts it down on the table. She can see by the way he bends his chin down towards his chest and opens his mouth that he is belching noiselessly.

Translated by Don Bartlett

New Wave Vomit have published a short story by me.

It is an excerpt from a longer thing I am working on. I've used the term novella. Perhaps you could also call it a 'cycle of mini-stories.' I don't know what I am going to do with it. Maybe nothing.

I have another, unrelated short story that is going to be published online somewhere else, but I'll make another post about that when it happens.

Recently I have been (re)watching lots of Eric Rohmer, reading Swedish autobiographical graphic novels and feeling nervous about certain life changing events.