Life before death

“We have almost no consideration for profit and that is probably why we are highly profitable. You can put that theory right into your corporate pipe and then smoke it. Some. In fact it's not even a fuckn' theory, it's a fact and that's why I've a Maserati parked outside the building doorway right now and for all I know I may have left the key in the ignition and the motor running. Why don't you go out and just grab yourself a free ride and see how far you can get? And while your doing that I'll have another glass of this fine French Brandy or maybe suck on a Cuban cigar. You see that's rock and roll and that's money.”

“ The thing about art is that it doesn't really exist, it's just stuff brought together, or other stuff taken apart and then along comes somebody and stands it up. Well once it's standing up, there in the public domain you have three choices really. You can ignore it, walk by and just deny it's there altogether, show it an unmeasured level of indifference. It'll fade away, into the background, some geeks might like it, there will income, low rents and crumbs from providers, recycling values, that's about it. Obscurity has it's appeal but it doesn't make you any real money.”

“You can hate it, throw things at it, criticize it, burn it down, run it out of town as the most dangerous thing you every seen, you could just say it's just a piece of talentless shit. There's a lot of it about. You might, if you've got some history get valuable publicity and that's ok, most likely you'll just be seen as a bad investment and then you'll be ostracised. Believe me to be ignored is worse than anything, worse than bullying or violence, but that's where you end. I reckon you get three chances, blow all three, they hate you three times in a row, three turkeys, three strikes and you're so far out you're not even in the same country anymore. That bad. End of that story.”

“But the third way is that for some inexplicable reason (or not) you really like it and they like it, it's brilliant. It's special and unique and work of certain genius and what's more it may well have some commercial value. It's worth money. Who'd have thought that the dumb ass idea of yours mister/miss writer, artist, poet, musician etc. would be worth something? Next thing you know big boys like Apple or Samsung or Ford or Exon want to give you support in your venture, use your sweet image, your sound, your association, you can smile all the way up there on the media free ride. They just come along and shovel you right up like you landed on the street from the ass of a horse and now they want to sprinkle you amongst the roses where they think you'll do them some good.”

“So what have you got to show me?” I sat down in front of his desk, laid back a bit on the chair and put both of my feet on his desktop edge and smiled. He grinned back and nodded. I grinned wider. We were going somewhere now. I took an envelope from my inside pocket, removed my feet from the desk and adopted a more gracious position as I handed it to him. He smiled and ripped it open. There was a folded note inside and a memory stick. The stick fell as he tore the envelope and landed on the desktop with a clatter.

“It's all you really need,” I said. “This is the work you've waited on. Push it forward the right way, bearing in mind profit isn't everything and...we'll make a tidy sum.” I sat back and produced my most winning, confident smile yet. Or so I thought. Ideas have value, even bad ideas, even good ideas badly executed and if he thought that it was all some kind of saleable art then I wasn't going to argue. We'll be dead a long time while the others discuss, write books and film documentaries about  wether or not it all was what we said it was. History isn't a bother to me, I'm content to help make it happen  because I know I won't have to live through it. That's some one else’s' problem.

“Damian Hirst designs a block of apartments, condos, whatever you want to call it, it's a holistic art and lifestyle project. We build it in Los Angeles, that's the first. He designs them inside and out, nobody can change things once they've signed up to our management scheme but they are there, living, breathing, sleeping and fucking in an appreciating artwork that's their home. Their piece of action, their share of the prestige, their investment or pension plan or whatever. Then we build another block in Miami, in Paris or in London, in Sydney. Wherever, but up to a limit...and we control all the business, all the ins and outs, all the transactions and all the media interest. The money will be coming out of all our ears. You need to phone this number.”

He read the note and put the stick into a laptop then dialled the number. I zoned out, my part was over for now. I stood and looked out of the window. I was in a dream. So I watched as the light began to dim, the sky was changing, the clouds running and stumbling, fading into the east as quickly as they were replenished from the west taken back up to some other bulbous, fattened place of fury. Soon the heavy air released the rain and the ground breathed in. I wanted to run out and get myself wet, soak my shirt, stick out my tongue and hold my head back. Do a kind of chicken dance to celebrate another day of rain. I smiled inside myself, I chose not to give anything away. Tomorrow would do, that's a different day and more my day. This day is too damp, too heavy for a show of emotion or uncontrolled happiness. This was all about art after all.

Dark Materials

"I like it in the dark. It stays dark for long periods, now the power has been cut, now the candles are burning low and petering out. Here I am, in a misty, musty gloom, fed up with politicians and people saying one thing and thinking another, doing one thing and believing another, voting for things they neither understand nor believe and stuck in systems and set ups that have been proven to fail time and time again. So now I'm here, where I've always been, in a grey place. I look down at my hands, rough and dirty, fingernails broken, grim and dirt in them, pitted and grained. I rub the dry palms together, wearing through the skin, the hard working skin, the tough and worn skin. The hands of a worker. Now I'm at rest, sitting on a wooden box, staring into the dark and thinking dark thoughts with clear edges. It's the clear edges that define the problem, finding and setting limits. Mine are moving, I'm on a journey, I'm an explorer.

My eyes have become accustomed to the light, I see further but not far. My horizon is limited, I pace around the interior of the house, now the world is bigger but never big. I never wanted a big world. All I wanted was enough of a world to explore. One without people and disturbance and those mas of ideas that come through the letterbox on flyers, pamphlets, propaganda, news sheets and circular letters. I see them and the complex systems they purport to represent, the ideas they push, the interaction they call for but these things I ignore. I ignore then like the knocks on the door, the silent pushes on the dumb doorbell, the voices, pointed and filtered through the letterbox. That split little portal into daylight, bright stabs that lead outside to cash machines and buses, trampled leaves and rainy conversations. The occasional twilight run to the corner shop, foraging supplies and holding up activity. Maybe searching  further afield to replenish tools and materials, skip diving or picking things up. I need the memory the outside to dig out the inside. Digging out the inside and putting it outside. I always found places, places are everywhere if you only look.

Then there's my downward trajectory. My return to the swamp and the evolutionary source, into the black and crawling, crawling through the chambers and constructions. Deconstructing and breaking through. I have this idea of where I'm going, this ideal that forms in my head, my progression down into the bowels and the source. Chasing drips and rivers, breathing bad air, foul and reeking, hot and sticky like some escaping prisoner, unsure of the root to some final freedom. That was what I wanted, that's what I'm still trying to find down there. 

Now I'm in a rest period. My note book and pencil lines define the day. Tear up the time into manageable bundles, into pieces of work and pieces of rest, pieces of reflection and pieces of sleep. I defy the world in this with my energy and hygiene, with my grand design and my scheme, my solitude and silence and my grim determination. You could say that I was living the dream, my dream, perhaps your nightmare, perhaps your curious indulgence. In this project my superiority is clear, my attack is to the underbelly, the bottom to the top, sailing in my muddy sea, caked in the hard waves and beyond the fickle weather. I am no slave but I work as if enslaved. That's all part of the twist and the pleasure. 

So you have me, you see me, but you don't. One day they'll bring me out in a coffin, or dirty like a dead dog from the gutter on an ambulance stretcher. Glenn Miller or Count Basie will play in the background as the neighbours look on, nodding and saying “well I never”, or just whispering, hands across their treacherous mouths. That was always what they did. My body, now dead with dirty nails and blood dried across my forehead covered in a sheet or zipped in a bag like a blitz victim or a battlefield casualty. It will all be seen as as some kind of unexplained, inexplicable mystery. One for the files and the college courses and a para or two in the Daily Mail. Then whisked away down the damp streets for the autonomy and ambiguity of the morgue and the final fire. Where might they scatter me or bury me deep? I should write down my wishes. Of course I wont care and I don’t care, my soul has passed on, ranging back and forth but mostly down, down in those tunnels. Care is for the weak and the living.

Your houses will slowly crumble, your streets they crack and subside. Doors no longer fit and windows wont close. The gutters leak and there are cracks, slim and unnoticed then great and yawning. Then the masonry starts to fall, trees bend and old people trip on the pavement cracks and the distorted kerbs. I did it all. I built my empire, my tunnel kingdom, under your home, your English castles. I tore away God's good earth with my bare hands and stolen shovels. I propped it up with rotten timber and broken furniture. An earthquake sitting inside a time bomb. A challenge for all the fine engineers with their degrees and their concrete pouring techniques. We'll see how quickly and how costly it is to fill my underground honeycomb. There will be blood and money, for miles in all directions. North, south, east and west. You see I am that thing...

I am that modern phenomenon, recognised, the weirdo, that thing you dread. You up there, paying your stupid mortgage every month, struggling to cope, keeping the faith and walking in the light. I was there, under your very feet, under your kitchen and living room, digging away beneath your possessions, your investments and all you hold dear. The subliminal secret warrior and terrorist staring up through the cracks in the floorboard. The dirty old bogeyman looking up your wife's skirt and giggling at your stupid little conversations. I was so inferior I just had to explore and travel the full spectrum to turn out so superior. As you shall all see. Meet me, see my handiwork, fifty years effort, sweat and hard labour for  the Mole Man of De Beauvoir Town."

Angel of the white Audi

And it came to pass that the Angel of the Lord appeared to me in a fiery and unexpected dream. I woke startled and a bit sweaty and confused. The angel had the head of a fox, the eyes of a cucumber, the ears of a buffalo, the heart and stomach of a feeble woman and a voice like silvery running water flowing down the golden valley of bronze dreams beside the iron town of the wooden woods next to the lake of pure crystal glass rendered by Disney's best. Then the angel spoke and I heard a voice that was like blue milk and Krispy-Kreme donuts mixed up in a blender with added jam, clotted cream and strawberries laced with fine brandy and some solid and sharp, dark chocolate chips. 

As I heard the sweet voice booming out like the horn of an angry Italian motor scooter I fell to my knees and cried, “Lord I am not worthy of these sights and sounds or the rather unusual smell that I'm getting a bit of a hint of. Yes I'm not worthy to bathe in this strangely eerie supernatural light and the whole wing flapping thing that's going on there in the back ground. In a nutshell I'm back to saying I'm not particularly worthy. Have you considered nipping out, down the street and checking if there are any more worthy types; I 'd suggest you try the bigger houses, there's probably a better class of person in there. I say that based on all the social politics and red top journalism that I've been subjected to in my short and so far uneventful life, nothing to do with any of your ideas or pronouncements...Lord.”

The Angel of the Lord just looked at me, I sensed a bit of disappointment as he placed his finger onto his lips as if to indicate that I should at this point shut up, so I did. He stepped forward and cleared his throat. I swallowed heavily and stepped back, kind of of trying to acknowledge the angel's obvious need for a bit of decent space in which to work. Ahem. Space to perform is important, you have to own it.

“You.” he was addressing me, that was clear, the other people, the classy ones were not going to get this message, just me. “I have a message for you and for all mankind (in a way). A message from the fictional heart of the universe or the virtual and vague Ancient of Days. A message that has been there since quite early on in the dawn of time, before breakfast anyway and that solemn and serious message is for your ears alone.”

I'm getting it now, for once it's all down to me, the chosen one, the vessel, the reliable recipient of this vital, divine message. This is no time to screw up so I'd better listen quite carefully. Check: eyes engaged. Check: not about to wander into some day dream. Check: not bursting for a pee or anything. Check: nothing distracting stuck in my teeth and no trapped wind that's making me feel a bit uncomfortable. “Ok.” I say. “Good to go with the whole message thing, thank you, your highness.”

“Fine,” began the angel, breathing in and nodding deliberately, “here is my grave and most serious message to you, listen up. Ahem. It has been noticed by the most omnipotent and very clever God of the entire universe that you are driving around in a rather shabby looking Volvo that does neither your public or self image any good. To be honest (and that is something that God does like to work on and also to emphasise in conversation) it looks like shit and so do you. Nobody is going to take you seriously driving around in that thing like some old git headed for his allotment. You are doing yourself down and your poor wife is at her wits end with the pain and embarrassment of having to ride shotgun in that heap. OK, I know you'll say that it's pretty reliable and that you've just had the timing belt done and shit like that but...that's just not good enough. You need an upgrade. Badly.”

“Lord, I know I've sinned and fucked up a bit, but I though that, for the sake of the planet (your planet?) I was kind of helping by a) not being greedy, b) not being materialistic and c) getting good value for money So that's me being thrifty, by running the old bean into the deck on a tight budget. Are you telling me that my humble and unassuming strategy for personal transport isn't what you'd wish it to be?” The angel breathed deeply, forcing a sigh and rolling his eyes, (didn't expect that really, as they are immortal and stuff like that. How does breathing work for angels in space and time and flying up high? Rolling the eyes in an over dramatic way is also a bit gay really).

“Look, I'm just delivering a pretty clear and simple message. It's my job and I'm not here to counsel you on the daft and complicated ideas you have rolling around in your head like a set of broken ball bearings needing a good grinding, a shot of grease and sorted out into their correct sizes with a pair of rusty tweezers. The Lord has spoken; well he is now via me and I am relaying his message and his message to you, squint built little minion and unloveable lump is...get yourself a white Audi. Like the one that one of those blessed Pope fellows might buy himself if he was an ordinary bloke or a salesman or something.” At that shattering news I fell to my knees. Limp and shattered.

“But Lord/Angel/Supreme Being, I cannot do such a thing. The white Audi is evil incarnate (or so I have been taught but the leaders, elders and betters of the Church of the Broken Hearted and Mother Mary Doll). A great grinning, extravagant (but classy and reliable) form of transport that only the devil himself or a close member of his family might ever drive upon the public highway. Think of the panic, despair and fear that the sight of a white  Audi in a rear view mirror has upon a poor, hapless and dimwitted Volvo driver such as I?” I allowed the tears to flow and went with them, down, out and into my own familiar  and dark place of comfort and solitude. A safe place or so it seemed. I rolled on the floor and ended, after a few spasms in the foetal position,eyes closed tight.

“Enough of the self pity and self deprecation. Get yourself a backbone and a bank-loan, get yourself a purpose and point. Do not however get yourself a porpoise and a joint. God never tells his flock of human and disobedient dummies stuff like that, no. Just get a white Audi and have done with it. Search Auto Trader now within a radius of no more than 20 miles and be prepared to pay no more than £4k. Oh, and  make sure that if it's done more than 70,000, which it certainly will have done at that money, that it's got a recently renewed timing belt. Trade only no private sales and make sure they throw in a bit of warranty. No dogs please and try to get a non-smoker. Thus says the Lord.”

“Ok, got that.”

Grandfather

"So a few days after my grandfather died we discovered this old, unrestored Maserati in his garage. I'm not sure if we'll ever know the true story, all the paperwork is missing, we just have the raw car. Dates back to the mid sixties said a neighbour but he'd never seen it run, so he said. We believe that.When I say we I guess I mean me, my sister isn't really bothered about it but because of the way his estate has been split we know 50% each. Maybe I should work out a trade, maybe. I was considering poison but that's a bit extreme and we get along pretty well. I think I'll do the right thing and offer her $500 for her share, that and the coffee maker and the enamel pin badges that look like they came from the Far East. That should do it. Anybody know a good mechanic around here?"

Friends etc.

“We hadn't really ever believed that the long awaited friends reunion would ever take place. The prospect, ten years and more after the plot device of divorce, of  them getting together to gather up the loose ends or develop the lifelong storyline and tale  telling was just too remote. We'd allowed them into our lives, those contrived but lovable characters, them with their crazy and unrealistic behaviour, all those shared moments of comedy, pathos and irony, the parade of in-jokes and clever quips, the procession of completely unlikely situations and funny coincidences played out before an audience ever ready to laugh and lap up each well rehearsed and performed set piece. It was a lifestyle choice, we saw them and mirrored all we could, hairstyles and mannerisms, endless coffee mugs, polystyrene cups, cookies and muffins, cliches and appreciation. We built our own little tributes and tableaux, we lived vicariously through these characters, uptown, downtown, adopted into that dysfunctional and unlikely combination of families as they walked around in wide open dramatic spaces holding loud two person conversations whilst the the rest of the room ignored them as it rolled on. Realism was conveniently suspended for so long and in so many locations. None of that,  either in production values or in belief really mattered, we were spellbound and addicted. We were all in there as willing victims bought into spending time in this ideal world were happy endings eventually came round after soft struggles, foot stomping petulance or romantic happenstance. There were no nasty people, just jerks and little bullies, things to be brushed off and dealt with and money and bills and the big bad world are alluded to but never really part of the spoiling of plot as we bathed in the warm escapism of each unlikely episode. For a while I loved the mythology, the sense of being part of something but I also was uncomfortable, like I'd been taken over or violated. You felt it too, I'm sure you said as much, perhaps I misheard. So it's over, it's gone, life in a modern day  religious cult has ended and we're excommunicated, hardly fair on you I know. It was me all along, I brought the house down on us brick by brick, you were as much of a victim as they were but I didn't really mean any of it, I didn't intend to poison the communion wine or taint that bread but I did. What's done is done. I'll make a clean and clear confession to the authorities, you'll be fine, they'll be here some and so will the Sunday papers. Friends? Who needs them?”

I observe

Life isn't such a bleak thing at all, it's quite the opposite. Don't believe everything they tell you. Some people never get that, they remain locked in the perpetual cycles of the lowest levels of existence, grumbling like itchy volcanoes. I was thinking these thoughts and also considering a packet of crisps and some oatmeal oatcake cookie things (with dips). The question was/is what to eat first, was there an appropriate order or ranking for these two foods that I should honour or succumb to. What did convention demand and was there any digestive type of advice I should consider? I briefly googled but all that came up was Steve Marriot's life story and various odd and unrelated articles about what music really consisted of. That forced me to turn back to the BBC but the news there was all too real and repetitive. I decided that hunger had placed me in some weakened state where my powers of decision making were diluted, I might be confused as if caught up in some prelude to old age and the eccentric behaviours that might accompany that segment of existence. Old age and making decisions didn't seem to go together so I decided to pull myself together and eat nothing right now and just go out.

While outside I observed a pair of Oystercatchers. They were my favourite bird, oddly elegant but with a cartoon look and comical gait and some almost human glint in their little eyes. Black and white and orange with staccato movements and sudden bizarre little flourishes of behaviour, quirky and out of this world, perhaps having stumbled into our universe from another parallel one where birds rule. They seemed intelligent and purposeful as they pecked and explored high up on foreshore. A long way from the high water mark and any actual naturally occurring oysters. Perhaps they'd gone off their food or were they just searching the whole area for an item that had been lost or misplaced? I'll never know but I did start to think they might not be quite as intelligent as I first though, there, wandering about pecking at pebbles so far from any seafood. I returned home an just ate the crisps and then the oatcakes. Seeing the bird's lack of direction and purpose had given me some.

I don't know the name of it but that feeling you get, that anxious and driven thing, when all you want is for the events and commitments that are pressing down on you, the things that are “must do” not “might do” or “could do” but “must fucking well do”, those things you want to happen as soon as possible, for them to be over. That feeling  of bringing on the event, peddling time towards you in some blur of quick execution. They are there, bearing on you like an express train and like a tidal wave. You're braced and ready for the impact, tight and tense for the landing of the killer punch and the weighing up of your chances of survival. The gamble and the uncertainty, like pulling off a bank robbery or some violent crime, successful and undetected and getting it away with it. Phew. 

How much time is there before the next enjoyable thing comes along? That was always my question. My long but short and to the point question. When can I expect pleasure  next and in whatever form? And it has to be soon. It could be simple enough, a smile, a banana, punctuation, a story told, whisky, a song on the radio, sunlight flickering through the blinds, a touch of the hand, a whole film lasting 90 minutes or more, a stranger visiting, silence or surprise. I could have carried on; my enjoyable things formed up into a list was a long list. There was a whole world of enjoyable things and I had only really named a few. It then occurred to be that just making lists was enjoyable, just naming and sorting good things and putting them in order, even a random order was good. Satisfaction was pleasure and for the most part, for me it was found in very simple, straightforward, everyday things. I'd no idea how that had come to be. I even liked the word thing with all it's meaningless, solid and abstract possibilities; lists of things. Why was it that I was so easily pleased? Perhaps I was some kind of simpleton, simple soul, easy pleased idiot. Perhaps I just didn't care. Unsophisticated and lacking in complexity and depth, childish and naive, eager to accept whatever came my way and so totally predictable. Happy when the clouds moved, the rain pattered, the sun broke through or the fog rolled it. Easy, cheap happiness, you cant buy it. Soon, any moment, soon, it would be time to look out of the window again.

True wisdom

Kim Jong-un's note takers just write gibberish for effect. To make the not so great man look greater, to perpetuate the myth that he is forever producing wise quips and pointers, a flow of original ideas, good practise and inspirational thinking that, for the greater good of the Korean people and the wider world must not be lost. He really knows how to do things. Just hold a mirror to his lips to see if he actually breathes, he may be dead or a machine. I just about know how to make a passable cup of coffee, where to look on Autotrader and how to unwrap a McVities Digestive Medley biscuit. I know about snacks and quality time on a laptop or the phone. Precious moments of self indulgence when nothing really happens other than the ritualistic wasting of that most precious but undervalued item, time. Time to yourself, snooze time or reading or dreaming time. Time perhaps to remove you shoes and try to tickle your own feet, hot and tired as they probably are. Some people see time as a story, a curve or an arc in the universe and all of us, apart from Dr Who walk along it, or are at least on it, travelling together in the same way. Heads up or down on this elongated pilgrimage, determined to spend our days doing what we like or what we feel to be right. Looking out for our fellow travellers and helping them with their heavy loads. That's the burden time gives us all. Shovelling shit, earning a crust, creating stuff or horsing around. That relentless ticking and candle burning that spills us out into the great endeavour of just getting by.  We fall in love, we get angry, hungry, frustrated, but the clock can't be stopped and the long march drags on. The trouble is that we soon realise that the long march isn't so long, it's all quite finite and really rather short. All those diagrams of time that stretch it out and show our lives and civilisations as a fleck of paint, a messy stain or a tear drop around midnight's final seconds on the 31st of December. That's how much we mean. Where is your good cup of coffee, your well presented pet, your straight shelf, your soufflé or your wondrous academic achievements? Where are your friends and family, your neat cupboards, your manicured lawn or your beach holidays? Probably captured, in random phrases and works, in Korean script or bad English in Kim Jong-un's great library of notebooks. For indeed as the Dali-Lama, Steven King or Heinrich Himmler might have said; “all true wisdom is somewhere and I'm fucked if I know where that somewhere is so it must be someplace and why would it not be there, in the notebooks of Mr Kim Jong-un.”

Hundred year old man

“Everybody that goes comes back some time. The truth is I've been having second thoughts about reincarnation. What was once a dream or just a bad idea now seems...likely. We are all in this huge rotational spin, spinning as loose souls in space, confused and searching across the great Astral Planes. We are seeking for the correct resting place, the vessel, the homecoming. The process carries on and we are somewhere, unseen but plotted on the spiral path to the place we belong. I say all this because of the flashbacks and flash forwards that plague and entertain me. Short bursts from a vivid reality that  reeks of familiarity and inherent strangeness. Touch, feeling and memory all conspire to remind me of these fragile previous lives. Spirits and fragments, things deliberately hidden by the physical but determined and strong, pushing through the barriers of the possible and into the reality of the physical. How else can I describe it?”

“This journey is not an easy one and as my awareness has grown I've found it all the more difficult to stay with it, to travel and remain steadfast in this journey. The long trek through the confused memory where sense should prevail but cannot. Such is the force and the energy of history. Like some pulled back catapult determined to power mankind forward the trapped souls hold and retain the power and force of indescribable travel. There is frustration in the limited release. The sense that though the raw forces should prevail they never can quite gain their necessary release. They are trapped and the journey, far from being smooth and steady becomes a struggle and a stutter. We grudgingly are allowed to move forward but do so in a great fog, direction is lost and purposes are unclear, we need a light and map.”

These were the dying words of Jeremiah Black. A gunfighter, a robber, a Christian Minister, an alcoholic, a grandfather and a cancer sufferer (though the death certificate said pneumonia and bullet wounds). Jeremiah died in 1914. I was there because I was Jeremiah.

Three faces of winter

Behind the Chinese screen. 

In this business I just take my time, when I find the right thing I check it out, I research and then I pounce and buy and ship out quickly. That was why I was in this rather seedy antique market today. The air was heavy with dust, pollution and cooking smells. I felt a little sick and a little uneasy but I was hunting for a bargain and I thought I'd found the bargain of the trip. “There!” On the wooden and silk screen a delicate design was portrayed, the three faces of Winter. A formal but disturbing piece. The faces were gaunt and marked, grey and washed out, split with a naked aggression turned towards each face. Warriors or war lords sneering at each other across a frozen wasteland. Winter arguments, cold and unending seemed to prevail. There was a little light and shade in their woven expressions, as if the silk worm had tickled each white countenance just a little to humanise by a degree or two but not enough to force a thaw. There were scripts, hidden messages  and far away storks, the hope of spring while the ice warriors strutted and argued and waved their swords and bamboo sticks. There was a huge narrative somewhere to explain and inform but right now I didn't need to know anymore. I'd had a chance to look over the exhibit, to take it in. I'm not an expert but I could see age, craft, history, rarity and most important value. This was a piece worth getting hold off. I could make some money, good money.

I looked around the rest of the market. There were other pieces, interesting, glittering, catching the eye before the screen did. There were vases and dragons, great hangings and rolled up scrolls and inked paintings but I was going with my instincts. The screen was there, part of the landscape of the shop, hidden in plain sight. It was the best thing by far. I just wasn't sure how the proprietor regarded it and how, in the event that I showed interest,  he'd try to inflate or push the price. There was nobody around so I quickly took a few photographs. It was as if I was under scrutiny. No sooner had I flipped my camera into my pocket when a head popped out from behind the screen itself. A girl, grinning, peeking and looking me up and down. She was an artful mix of Chinese and European bloods, dark haired but no quite olive enough, western eyes but an Asian mouth and nose. She smiled, ventured out a little further and asked me if I liked. I nodded and pointed to the stock and offered a few compliments. All very interesting, well displayed and of good quality. Business must be good I offered. She shook her head, all was not well, business was down, the air pollution kept the customers away, the smog affected the stocks, there was trouble here and there. No, business was not so good, not right now.

Whatever strategy I was going to employ was abandoned. I engaged in small talk around some other items to deflect from the screen and she played along. There were a few hints and stories of these objects,  ownership and how they came to be here. Their various virtues and potted histories were trotted out.I smiled and nodded. I soaked it up but my eye kept returning to the screen. She noticed.  “You like?” I stuttered and pointed to a print that was hanging near by. “You get this screen at a very good price, very good, not like anything anywhere else.” I thought what the hell and we started on the money matters, American Dollars, cash, now. I carried cash always, that was how I worked. We talked figures, she screwed up her face and rolled her eyes. I returned the compliment and upped the tone of my body language. 

I was right up against the screen, studying the details, the form, the working. She was beside me, pointing to the figures, jabbering about the tales it told.  Three faces of Winter...but there is a curse.
I looked her straight in the eye. “Curse?” “The three faces of Winter is one side of the screen, have you not seen the other side?” I'd thought that the screen was the same on both sides, it hadn't occurred to me that the other side might be different. 

I struggled past various awkward artifacts and managed to crane myself around to see the rear of the object. It was pretty much the reverse of the displayed side though the design had faded a bit and there were black or dark brown stains and splattered across part of it. “And the stains are?” “Blood of course, blood from the various attacks, murders, that sort of thing”. She was grinning at little, confident in my ignorance and delighted that I was now intrigued. I leaned over a little further and clambered over the bric-a-brac until I was finally behind the screen. Once there I could clearly see the marks and the fine work that had gone into the manufacture of the screen. I stood for some time taking in the newly revealed detail. There were a lot of stains it seemed, not all the same colour, in different places and all looking like they'd occurred over time. A long time. I crouched down and took a closer look. This was authentic and I was sure and there was more of a story to it. I love history and the chance to cash in on it.

The next few seconds were a blur. I was aware of the girl getting closer to me, smiling. I also sensed another figure behind me or around me, had something emerged from the screen? That made no sense. Then a sudden pain, sharp and intense. I wanted to shout out but I was choking. A sharp object had pierced my neck. I entered some other world. There was pain and a grinning face. There was a spurt of red and I was falling. Then a black cloud passed across my eyes circling like some swirling passing storm and I was gone.

I awoke in the hospital. In a white bed with a bandage tightly wrapped around my neck. The slow shock of the truth was painful and sobering. I was in a city a hundred miles away and I was without explanations. I'd been found in an alley, drugged and stabbed but alive. No money, passport or valuables. No connections with the market I guessed, the police wanted a word apparently. I was angry and confused...and cursed. I looked across the ward. There on the wall there was an old print, a Chinese piece. I recognised it immediately now. The three faces of winter but without faces, just the bare background. In life there are no clear rules, people do what they do, there are no rules apart from those you choose to adopt for yourself and you must stay wary of the rules that others may make for themselves.

Perfect potato

Imagine Margery in an imaginary menagerie

Consider Cicily in a cataclysmic capillarity

Enable Eleanor in an egalitarian envelope

Admiring Alison on an allegorical animal

Seeing the best 

Fearing the worst

Love and punctuation

Fit to burst.

"The richer I am at writing the poorer I seem at self expression and the more I feel for that abstract and empty space that temporarily sits there between my ears and behind my eyes. It frustrates and fascinates and I cannot grasp it. I have known it all my life but it appears strange, foreign and unlikeable. It is hostile towards me many times, contrary and determined to thwart what I think are my own finely tuned purposes. Occasionally, then, now and without warning out of it pops, like a unexpected magician's rabbit or card trick ending, a clever, bizarrely structured or polished thing. Straight and correct, like a diamond or a perfect potato. There it is, raw, dripping dry  and born from my mind. Puzzling and inexplicable, like an unplanned puppy birth or some unrelated consequence of a backward thought. These moments make me happy and, if I am truthful, a little confused because up until that time I surely had forgotten that I don't really know myself or how the fluid mind plays these tricks. Again and again it would appear to churn out it's contents  and memory still plays these damnable repeated tricks."

Modern Fable

"The faulty ring pull on the can of cat food meant I had to open the tin with a regular tin opener. A process that the can clearly was not designed for. It was near the end of the laborious opening revolution that the can began to distort. There then followed a slow explosion that left me and my shirt front covered in tasty and meaty morsels, served in a highly pungent gravy that, as far as my blocked up nose could tell owed a lot of it’s existence to fish based products of an unknown type. Perhaps today was not to be my lucky day after all."

Upstairs in the bedroom and for the second of two consecutive days, one after another that is, a young and lost pigeon had been tapping at the window. When I say tapping I mean flying into the  window glass as if it was not there and flapping it's wings. Then doing it again and then retiring, tired out to somewhere up on the builder's scaffolding for a rest. Then it would return. From time to time one or other of the cats would sit on the windowsill and try to out stare the pigeon. It was a game that meant a lot to the cats, they practised intensely and seriously. The pigeon didn't quite get it and broke the staring match pretty regularly. The cats remained a full hunting tension all through these encounters. I liked to break them up by pulling on the cat's tails, gently but firmly. The spell of the pigeon and the dreams of a successful hunt were then broken in the cats, for the time being. I suspected that the pigeon had mistaken our house for the railway bridge along at Torryburn. Our overall orientations were the same as was our distance from the river, or so I thought. It was an explanation I could believe in.

It was about then or maybe during a fast drive up the M90 that I lapsed into daydream mode. A voice that might have been a pigeon voice told me a story about how in their early days the SNP and Labour Parties joined together to attract Korean money into Scotland. Big money. They decided that to attract industry and Korean satellite activity they'd build the biggest building in the civilised world behind some trees in Dunfermline. They did this quite successfully but at the expense of a few schools and hospitals and some cream teas and mini-buses for the aged. The huge building was duly opened by the Queen or Barack Obama's representative with pomp, circumstance and a detachment of bagpipers. The ceremony could be seen from space and ariel shots were sold to local businesses as a means to recoup some of the cash. Sadly the great factory plan failed when the Koreans realised that their current suite of products had been over taken by technology gleamed from some alien information and blueprints shown on the Discovery Channel one Sunday night. In the snap of a finger the industry had moved on and the triumph that was the Scottish building turned into an empty disaster and a great white elephant. The Scottish Government were puzzled by this chain of events but issued a statement to say that they were confident that a boom in white elephants was just around the corner. We were riding a crazy wave on the edge of emergent technology whilst all around us Korean restaurants and take-aways shut up shop and moved south to London or Manchester. The promised boom never arrived, head hung low and school leavers found other ways to pass the time. Ironically this involved them buying thousands of smart phones based on the new alien technology that had so scuppered the big Korean plan.

Five years later the day came when the now worthless plant had to be demolished. To avoid embarrassment a new blackout was declared and many more trees were planted. An innocuous and anonymous housing estate was also built around the edges as well as a Dobbies and golf range. The ordinary people hardly noticed the demolition works and slowly and piece by gravelly piece the concrete chunks that were designed to last a thousand years were crushed up a shipped to Spain to be made into Ford Fiestas. Nobody ever mentioned Korea ever again unless in the context of some silly joke about fast food or K-Pop. A number of locals did take the plunge and buy Korean cars. This was seen as a comforting indicator that the healing process was truly underway.

The strange thing was once they'd cleared the site and moved the rubble they discovered a deep subterranean lake that had been covered up by the huge building. The lake was so deep it was described as bottomless. In the lake there were blue fish. A kind of fish nobody had ever seen before and they were there in their thousands and they tasted good. Here was the opportunity we'd been waiting on. Out of the jaws of defeat and disaster a new and tasty blue fish industry emerged. It was quite a success and the numbers of accidental drownings, barbed wire impalements and food poisoning scares were never as high as were quoted in the official statistics prepared by the Sunday Mail. The locals just laughed it off and tucked into their sweet blue fish and got on with their enhanced leisure pursuits. It was just like the good old days. Looking back I'm sure that the aliens, having revolutionised the phone industry with their bright and uncalled for ideas and put us out of that business decided to compensate the lowly Scots by sending in the blue fish. A parting gift if you will. 

When I came around I was just level with Glenfarg.

Five fingers open

Breakfast with Jennifer Lawrence was a strange, icy affair. She was looking at me now and again but in truth not much. I was not the centre of her attention nor was breakfast. Breakfast was mainly black coffee, various rather nice chilled fruit juices in elaborate glasses and different kinds of fruit salad. Her frown and her dry lips said everything. She was watching the door. She was expecting somebody. I felt sure of the that. A deal, an offer, a way out. It would be something like that. Way beyond me and my current level of gifting. The waitress came by and topped up the coffee. I could tell she kind of wanted to engage with Jennifer (and normally that would have happened quite easily and naturally, her reputation and most evidence told the world that she was an open, pleasant person who wouldn't snarl at or avoid normal contact with persons in the street or breakfast waitresses), but today Jennifer was not playing that or any other PR worthy game. Today was not to be about scoring those kind of points. A couple of times I tried to spark a conversation. I smiled and compliment her look, the fruits, the décor or just the weather (or what little I could discern about the outside world via grey swathes of blinds and plate glass masked by clumsy air conditioning). 

Eventually, sometime into her third cup of coffee she spoke, it was a bit of a mumble really, as if she was in character or practising a line. She called me a fucking useless idiot. It was whispered, low, more like a secretly spoken thought that had slipped out. It struck me that though she wanted me to hear it she wanted me to know that despite the meaning and weight of her statement she was unwilling nor even interested enough to apply any more effort or energy to it that to deliver it via a feeble whisper. That was kind of insulting but, I thought, possibly a passing thing, the articulation of the mood of the moment, a jagged edge from a broken hangover, a release of steam to ease some other unrelated feeling. That would be it.

The waitress was hovering, she was anxious, I could tell. Jennifer seemed to be smoking an invisible cigarette. I shooed the waitress away by asking for some brown toast, nicely burned at the edges. Jennifer took the opportunity to look at me this timer, hard and cold. She mouthed three words that had a familiar silent ring. Useless fucking idiot. I smiled and nodded and nodded a good morning to other guests about to sit at an adjoining table. They'd spotted Jennifer and were talking a little behind folded napkins. I said that room service might just have been a better idea, even in this place few A Listers came down and ate in the restaurant. She nodded and said she'd wanted to get out of the room anyway and shut the fuck up. I fiddled with the cutlery and drank a mouthful of the coffee. It was really good, this was a great hotel. I was living the dream albeit this part of it wasn't quite working out. At least she was still sitting there, at least we looked like we were in some sort of working or professional arrangement that wasn't truly dysfunctional or broken. Here we were keeping together some small, fragile but precious illusion. I sipped more coffee, so did she. We're mirroring I thought to myself in a sudden flush of positivity.

At that moment she stood up, pushed back her chair and glared down at me. For the first time I noticed that she was taller than I had thought. Imposing and powerful almost. Some extra stature had come upon her, maybe over night, maybe on account of me. Well that was unlikely. The waitress rushed across to remove the chair from Jennifer's path. She understood she had to clear the way. To make sure her exit was unhindered. But Jennifer just stood. She was staring at me, I stopped looking around, Id been taking in the commotion of the security men moving towards her and the angled eyes of other diners. She looked at me, hard this time, inside a tiny churn rolled across my inwards. Coffee and cereal were disagreeing over something in my stomach. She was still looking but began to open her mouth. Then she spoke, “Useless fucking idiot!” She broke into a broad smile and twittered with giggle, “Love you!” She waved five fingers open, turned and was gone. Little did I realise then that I'd never see her, or meet her in the flesh, again in my life.