The Painter

This painter, a new friend of my husband's, was on his way to our house. He was a bachelor in his early forties, making a kind of pilgrimage to his grandparents' grave – which happened to be a mile down the road from our house – so he was going to stay at ours. He called my husband from the station. He would get a taxi, he said, he'd see us in half an hour.

My husband had only just got to know this guy a couple of months before. They'd met on a long train journey sitting next to each other. Sounds like they hit it off quite quickly. They'd been out drinking a few times together in London since then. One of these times, my husband had missed the last train home and had to sleep drunk in Euston station until the trains started up again. I'd told him he wasn't a student any more, and shouldn’t be so reckless. It did worry me though, the bed still empty beside me at five in the morning.

I was unsure about this guy's visit, the painter. I'd never met him. I wasn't sure what it really meant that he was a painter. He wasn't a painter and decorator. He was the 'arty' kind of painter. A beret-wearing, life-drawing a naked model sprawled on a chaise longue kind of painter. I guessed he'd be wearing a cravat or brightly coloured shoes, perhaps a tiny pair of round spectacles. Maybe even a monocle. This man was coming to stay at our house.

On the train when they met, my husband had been on his way back from a business trip up in Scotland. I don't know what the painter was doing up in Scotland. Painting I suppose. He'd given my husband the sports supplement of his newspaper and they'd got talking. My husband had had a long stressful working weekend. It seems he really opened up to the painter. It was just what he needed, he said, after two long days of clenching his teeth through painfully anxious business meetings: to spill his guts to a sympathetic ear. He works in town planning. I don't know how the painter stayed awake hearing about my husband's work. I can barely do that and I'm his wife. But he did and you know what else? He asked to sketch a portrait of my husband. Not a proposition you usually get on a train journey. But my husband was delighted.

He sat pretending to look out of the window while the painter captured the likeness of his double chin and the wrinkles that town planning has put around his eyes. It's a very good likeness actually. My husband brought it home – he's planning to have it framed. He was so thrilled with the whole affair that he even had a go at sketching a portrait of the painter in return. I didn't see the result of that. I suppose the painter kept it. But the guy must have had a calming effect on my husband because he isn't the type to let his guard down; not the type to try sketching a portrait of somebody he'd just met on a train. Maybe they were drinking.

On our very first date my husband he told me he'd always wanted to be an artist. We were walking past an art gallery. He'd never mentioned it again, until now – until he met the painter. He did do an A level in art, but to my knowledge he'd not made a single drawing or any art since he'd known me. Not once have we visited an art gallery. I don't even recall watching anything about it on the telly. But since the train journey he's acted like he's always liked art. He's been reading a book about the history of art. And I found some odd little scribbled drawings on the notepad by the phone the other day. He'd also said he was going to drop by his parents’ house to see if he could find his old sketch book from school – he's sure it is probably in their loft.

Apparently he very much impressed his art teacher. His biggest project had been a great success. He got thirty blank post cards and painted them all with different pictures – each one had a picture that was somehow appropriate to the person he was sending it to. Then he photographed them for his records and sent them off. He sent them to everyone he knew, everyone he could think of: friends, relatives, teachers, his doctor, his dentist and one for Maggie Thatcher. He wrote a little message on the back of each one saying “don't be alarmed, it's just an art project” and so on. I haven't seen the photos but it sounded like a nice idea. In fact, it was such a good idea it got him into the local papers – the Hemel Gazette said recipients had better take good care of their cards, just in case this young artist made it big. They might be worth a lot one day.

I think my husband would have kept up art, even just as a hobby, if he hadn't had a run in with his dad over it. He had wanted to study it at university but his dad told him to drop it. He'd said it was time to grow up and be a man, time to study something worthwhile so that he'd be able to pay the bills and raise a family. My husband is vague and cagey about this stuff but as far as I can tell, from hints and passing mentions, I think they came to blows about it - actual fisticuffs in the kitchen. And then the next day when he got back from school his dad had burned all his art materials in the garden. That sealed the deal. His dad had won the argument. Actions spoke louder than words. Well, arson spoke louder than words.

Anyway, I was still uncomfortable about a real painter coming to visit. Maybe it's silly but I felt like we ought to have rare olives or expensive wine to offer him – to complement his artiness. My husband had told me the other day that one of the painter's on-going projects was collecting gloves. What has that got to do with paint? I thought. But I didn't say anything. Everywhere he goes, my husband explained, he looks out for gloves. Not in shops but out on the street, single lost gloves, dropped by accident. It strikes me as something you'd only see in winter, I said. But my husband said he keeps his eye out all year round, just in case, and has a big collection now. He photographs the gloves just as he finds them by the side of the road, in a bush, or waving from a railing, as you sometimes see them. Then takes them home, washes them, and adds them to his collection.

“Has he got any marigolds?” I asked.

“I imagine so,” said my husband, not looking up from his toast, “you see them in the street now and again so yeah...”

“Does he wear odd gloves?” I asked, after a pause.

My husband had both buttered and jammed his toast and now he looked up with a confused grimace and shook his head slowly. “You're just jealous because I've made an interesting new friend aren't you?” he said, dropping the knife to the table to make a meaningful clang. Maybe he was right.

Soon enough we heard the thud of a car door outside and then the crunch of footsteps on the gravel. My husband rushed off to let him in.

When the painter walked in my husband was fussing with his bag and coat, trying to be hospitable in a hasty muddle and I had time to observe the new arrival. He did have circular glasses, but not too out of the ordinary. Not strange at all actually, or even eccentric. They suited him, I thought. He had a big forehead, receding hairline, and longish floppy brown hair. But he was youthful. Very youthful and alert. He looked around nervously with intelligent eyes, everywhere but at me. He was dressed smarter than I'd expected. No paint on his clothes. Why would there be? No colourful shoes. No cravat. I tried to imagine him painting a naked woman. He looked too shy and boyish for that. It looked like he didn't know where to put his shoulders, didn't know how to stand in a room. Besides the apprehension, he looked very friendly, a bit like a rabbit. He had none of the wild, arrogant, pretentiousness I had worried about. I was warming to him already. And he'd brought us presents for letting him stay. Expensive looking wine and cheese - a really nice gesture.

He shook my hand and I felt embarrassed. I wanted to say or do something that would impress him. Say something clever or funny, something he'd never forget. But when you put yourself under pressure like that all of a sudden, nothing comes.

“It's good to finally meet you,” I said. And I meant it. I hadn't expected to mean it. My husband started talking very fast and led him into the house, taking him on a tour. I went and made cups of tea for us all, relieved that he seemed so nice but slightly sad that I wasn't quite involved.

When they got back from their tour round the house and garden it emerged that the painter wanted to go to his grandparents’ grave that same day, before it got dark – and it was late afternoon already. He asked us if we wanted to join him. I smiled and shrugged and looked over at my husband. He was making similar gestures.

“If you'd find it interesting,” said the painter, “It would be nice to go as a group.”

“Of course!” we both said at the same time.

And then only my husband said “It would be an honour”.

I'd never heard him talk about honour like that. I know it's just a figure of speech but it seemed very sincere. As we got our jackets on I was gripped by a feeling of discomfort. When had my husband ever thought about honour before? Was he trying to impress the painter? He's usually quite a reserved man, my husband, a bit too quietly macho for public emotion like that.

They chatted nonstop on the way to the cemetery and I walked alongside in silence. The discomfort was wearing off and I was beginning to realise that it might have been mixed with a bit of jealousy. This exciting thing was happening: the visit from the painter, and it was my husband's guest, my husband's event, not mine. I started to feel guilty. But then we were there and all three of us busy searching for the grave. The painter had never been there before. He told us he'd been trekking in the Himalayas when his grandmother died, which was before the days of mobile phones or the internet, and his grandfather had died before he was born. So he'd missed both funerals: the first by not existing yet, the second by being on the other side of the world.

He said how glad he was that we'd come with him; it wouldn't be half as good on his own because, after all, his grandparents were dead, they weren't going to be very interesting company. We all laughed. I looked over at a man on his own some way away, stooping to put flowers by a grave. I hoped he couldn't hear our laughter and think it disrespectful. But it didn't look like he had.

Then the painter produced a small scrunched up ball of paper and slowly unravelled it. He'd written out a poem on it that he wanted to read out. Did we mind if he read out a poem? he asked us. Of course we didn't. How could we mind? So he read it. And I could see the crinkled paper shaking a bit in his hand, even though there was no wind.

I honestly didn't mind but that didn't stop me wincing again a little bit. It seemed a bit contrived. Too earnest to be real. I supposed this was his eccentricity, his being-a-painter eccentricity, finally revealing itself. But what harm was it doing anyone? And it wasn't all that odd really. After all, his grandparents' bodies were right there beneath us, rotting away together. I tried to overcome my discomfort. And the poem was actually quite beautiful as it turned out. Even though my thoughts drifted away through most of it, the last line brought me back to the moment. It was something about “in stone... our love survives forever” but much better than that. I can't remember the exact wording. It was all about the grave of a married couple. It struck me suddenly, quite strongly. I felt a wave of sadness go through me. Or not sadness but emotion of some sort. Empathy? Does that make sense? No, it was like I'd suddenly realised all at once that I was going to die, that all three of us were going to die, but that it didn't matter so much because we were alive for the moment. It was an optimistic kind of sadness. I can't put it into words. I reached for my husband's hand and held it. He gave my hand a squeeze and my optimism seemed justified.

My husband insisted on cooking that evening, perhaps to show that he had a artistic side as well. I'll see your graveside poetry and raise you a well cooked dinner. I don't know. But he wasn't at all bad in the kitchen so I let him. It also gave me a chance to impress the painter. I still felt the nagging need to, somehow. I kept telling myself to ignore it but it wouldn't leave me. So I found myself sitting in the living room with the painter, drinking the wine that he'd brought us. Something about his shyness and the way he held himself meant that although I could see he was a very attractive man, I wasn't all that attracted to him. Still, I enjoyed looking at him and felt comfortable with that. He wasn't flirting with me either, as far as I could tell, which was nice. He is that strange type of person who is shy without being introverted. Shy, but not so shy he wouldn't read a poem in front of two people he hardly knew.

“So what do you do?” he asked.
“I run a business,” I said, “we make mouth guards. Custom mouth guards. I used to be a dental surgeon but I closed my practice after only a year or so and started a business. Been growing ever since. Ten thousand mouth guards the first year. Nearly a hundred thousand this year, four years on. Exported all over the globe.”
I found myself straying into work-speak, starting to speak in the advertising copy I used in meetings. I looked over at him, his dark, understanding eyes, he nodded for me to go on, putting me strangely at ease for someone I'd just met.
I said, “I was beginning to sound like I was vying for investments with a client, sorry.”
“Not at all”, he said, and took a sip of his wine, “I suppose it’s a clearer window into your job to hear some real talk from it. It was impressive.”
I smiled. Most people, if they said that, would be pushing a lie as far as it could go, just for politeness' sake, but it didn't seem that way.
“Is it just in sports that people wear mouth guards,” he said, “or are there other tooth-risking pursuits where a mouth guard comes in useful?”
“The most dangerous thing you can do for your teeth, besides contact sports, is go to sleep” I said with a sudden surge of pride that I'd said something so witty and mysterious. Then a pang of fear that he'd think I was still trotting off half-remembered lines of ad-copy, which I wasn't this time.
“Really? How is that?” he said leaning forward with an expectant smile.
“Well our main market for mouth guards besides sports usage is for bruxism.” I said
The painter shook his head slightly to show that he didn't know what that was.
“Gnashing your teeth, grinding them together involuntarily” I said, “it's actually very common but most people that do it don't realise they do it. Only the worst cases need a mouth guard. We do a range of mouth guards for it.”
“So does this happen when people have nightmares?”
“Yes, that's often a factor.”
“I thought so. Because my grandfather, the one whose grave we just saw, he could have done with a mouth guard. He ground his teeth really badly. He was a world war one veteran and had horrible nightmares after the war, in fact, for the rest of his life.”
“Gosh. What did he do about it?”
“Well I think more and more towards the end of his life he chose to avoid sleep whenever possible. Tried his best not to. He was a kind of purposeful insomniac. But even so, he did sleep sometimes and when he did he ground his teeth together with the nightmares.”
“Was it noticeable?” I asked “I mean, could you see the damage he'd done to his teeth when he smiled?”
“I think you could. But I never met him. He died in sixty six, one year before I was born.”

“Oh right, of course.”

“I have read his diaries though.” He put his wine down on the coffee table and became more animated. “He wrote a lot about his recurring nightmares, trying to purge them I suppose, to put them in his diary and leave them there so they wouldn't trouble him at night”
“Did it work?” I said.
“I don't know. I don't think so” he suddenly looked slightly sad and took a sip of his wine. I took a sip of mine too, copying him thoughtlessly.
He cleared his throat and said “I mean I suppose it did work to some extent because he kept doing it for years. The dream diaries go on and on. But then so do the dreams. I think it worked in so far as it stopped any particular nightmare recurring, one he'd written down. But then the dreams adapted and he just had different ones, just as horrible.”
“Did he write about a painful jaw or headaches in the morning?”
“Yes” he said, excitedly, pointing at me and nearly getting out of his seat with excitement.
I grinned and shrugged as if to say, it's my profession, I know these things.
“He's what we call in the business 'a severe bruxer',” I said.
“Bruxer” he said, trying the word out for himself.

At this point my husband walked in holding the wine bottle. Bubbling and sizzling sounds were coming from the kitchen. He sat down next to me and squeezed my knee, looking briefly into my eyes questioningly, making sure I was all right looking after his guest. I gave a firm nod and he turned to the painter. “Can I top you up?”
“Yes please.” said the painter.
“Me too,” I said
“Right, I'd better get back in the kitchen,” said my husband, having replenished our wine, and off he went.

I looked down at my knee where my husband had squeezed it.

“Your grandfather” I said, waving my hand about vaguely to clear my clouded thoughts.
“Mm-hm?” said the painter, laughing a little at me.
“Tell me more” I said, beginning to feel the wine, “I mean, if you want, if you don't mind. Do you mind?”
“I don't mind at all. It's not as personal as it might be. I am fond of him from a distance. But you don't really know someone if you only read things they've written. Things they've written for nobody to see. I'm sort of eavesdropping.”

“Doesn't your dad talk about him? Or didn't your grandmother? Did you know her?”
“Yes, I knew her. She didn't talk a great deal about him except to say he was very brave. She said it a million times. It was all I knew about him until I was given the diaries. And my dad didn't say much about his dad either. Can't remember him saying anything at all about him actually. I get the feeling my grandfather's mind was ruined by the war. It hung over him and everything he did afterwards. I don't think he really paid much attention to his son, to my dad. He was bogged down with his war experiences, traumatised.”
“How awful” I said, annoyed at myself for not having come up with a more thoughtful response.
“The nightmares he wrote down are quite varied but they usually seem to involve watching something awful happen and not being able to move, not being able to stop it happening. The diaries don't ever mention what actually happened to him in the war but I imagine it was something like that. He probably saw a fellow soldier blown apart by a shell or something, unable to do anything about it himself.”

“Are all the dreams set in the trenches? If you know what I mean – 'set'”

“I think set is the right word for it, but no. They're never explicitly war based, though some of them are quite gruesome.”

“Like what kind of thing?” I said.

“Well actually, the one that sticks in my head is towards the end of the diary, a few weeks before he died I think, where his dreams had calmed down somewhat. But they got craftier, more subtle and sinister. They would start out benign and he'd gradually realise something terrible was happening.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, in the one that haunts me – the one I think about most – he is just in his living room reading the paper with a cup of tea and everything seems to be normal. He reads a review of a new exhibition at the Natural History Museum on butterflies. It's all too mundane to even be a dream. But then he hears piano scales; softly at first so he thinks they're coming through the wall from the neighbours. But the neighbours don't have a piano. Then he realises it's the pianola in the corner that hasn't worked for years. And pianolas don't tend to play scales, right. So he walks over to it, beginning to feel anxious. It speeds up and up and gets louder and louder. It's almost like a horror film. Then he notices that the keys are made of skin instead of ivory. The skin is old, with wrinkles and moles. But it's still alive. It looks alive somehow. Or he just knows it is, as you just know things in dreams.”
“Oh god!” I said, as a shiver went down my spine.
“That's basically it but he goes into it in such detail in his diary. Pages and pages. He was stood there a long time staring at it, wishing it would stop, unable to move, until he eventually woke up in a sweat. I suppose that one stays with me all the more because I grew up visiting my grandmother in that same house with that same old broken pianola in the living room. So it links up with my memories. It's odd because some of the dreams are far more gruesome, but that's the one that haunts me. And I think it was one of the most powerful ones for him too, from the number of pages in the diary that are devoted to it.”
“I was expecting something to explode.”
“Yes, some of his other dreams have explosions, blood and guts, dead or dying bodies, that sort of stuff. But this one is pretty unique.”
“And is he always watching things happen? Never involved in the action himself?” I asked.
“Yes, I think so.” He rubbed his hands together carefully, “Uh - no actually there is one dream where he's having his teeth pulled out,” he smiled, “We're back to your expertise.”
“I reckon his teeth were hurting from all that grinding he did and that influenced the dream.”
“I bet you're right” he said.

I found myself thinking how good it would be if he remained a life-long friend of my husband's so we might have nice conversations like this now and again for the rest of our lives. It was a feeling I was unused to. If men had interested me before this, it had been mixed with sexual tension or flirting. At the very least it had some distant ache behind it. An ache in the body. Since I'd been with my husband I would flinch from it guiltily if I felt like that and try to avoid whoever it was causing it. But this was different. He was attractive, interesting, single and youthful. He was even interested in me, as far as I could tell. But there was no ache. I hadn't known you could talk to a man like this. At least, not an attractive man my age. It was platonic. But I could still see that he would make a good lover. I felt very grown up. I reckon it’s rare for anyone at all to feel grown up. I usually feel like I’m still a little girl, duping everyone around me into thinking I'm a grown up.

After dinner, the three of us returned to the living room. We were all a bit drunk by then. We'd finished the painter's wine and another bottle we had in the cupboard and we were onto the spirits. The painter had asked us how we first met and my husband had told him the story, at length, beginning to slur. It's not all that interesting and I think my husband realised that because all of a sudden he said:

“But enough about us, what about your love life? Handsome man like yourself, they must be queuing up.”

The painter looked down and moved his head about, not quite shaking it. He was drunk. For a moment I even wondered if he'd even heard the question. Then he said, slowly, “I can’t love...”
I saw my husband wince. And for the eternity of a few seconds we all sat there looking at the floor, not knowing what to say, too drunk to put on the best of British stiff-upper-lip façade. Too drunk to think of any response at all. I nearly said That’s a very lonely thing to say, but I thought better of it. I had the sudden urge to look after him - the ludicrous notion that he could move into the spare room. That we could adopt him like a grown up son. He could paint in the garden.

At long last my husband said

“Oh mate, I'm sure you just haven't met the right one yet – that all it is – she's out there.”

The painter nodded, looking unconvinced and glum.

Then on came the TV all of a sudden, my husband wielding the remote, and I clawed my way out of the big sofa onto my feet, “Who wants a coffee, I think we've drunk ourselves down into the dumps.”

The painter put his hand up like a school boy, “Meee” he said.

“Yup, and me,” said my husband.

When I came back in with the coffees there was a programme about astronomy on TV and the boys were ignoring it. The painter was saying “... that’s the trouble with art. You've got to watch out you don't become one of those artists. I mean, I think every artist is one of those artists, but you've got to keep it in check.”

“Keep what in check?” I said.

The painter turned to me with a renewed twinkle in his eye, as though he'd already had his coffee. “The tendency to hide behind your art and turn away from the real world. To seek out fame and fortune in art.”

“You mean by becoming a famous artist?” I said.

“No, no. I mean in the art itself. In the fantasies you put on the canvas. You know, even if it's abstract art with just blotches of colour, there's a process of fantasising that went into it that only the painter is aware of, or only partly aware of. But painting yourself as a hero doesn't make you a hero. It's just socially acceptable daydreaming.”

“That’s why so many artists end up drinking themselves into the gutter” said my husband, slapping the painter on the shoulder manfully and laughing.

“Exactly, yeah, you're joking but that's exactly it. The fantasies just don't deliver. Because they're like an imaginary meal, it might taste good but doesn't stave off hunger. So in the end they need something to deaden the disappointment.”

“Drink and drugs,” said my husband.

“Or suicide!” said the painter, still in twinkling good cheer, his coffee untouched.

“So how do you avoid that disappointment?” I said.

“I don't know.” said the painter, “Maybe by telling you two about it like I am now. Keeping things in the real world. Not losing myself in the fantasies of art.”

“Or becoming a famous artist and making the fantasies come true?” said my husband.

“Yes, that might help...” said the painter with a kind of bitter smile, “but success is no guarantee of happiness. The stereotype of artists suicide or drinking themselves into early graves is not just from the ones starving in their garrets, unable to sell a single painting. Lots of them do it after they've become rich and famous. That's how we recognise the stereotype at all. The success can be a burden. Or it can leave them feeling as empty as they did when they were unsuccessful. Or even emptier.”

“But I reckon,” said my husband, “it doesn't matter how much you try to persuade yourself fame and fortune is not all it's cracked up to be, you'll still want to have a crack at it!”

I was enjoying this drunken philosophy session. My husband had his coffee in one hand and a tumbler half full of whisky in the other. He began to swirl them both in little circles together, peering into them thoughtfully, and he went on “I mean, it's like when people say money doesn't make you happy... we all agree on that but it doesn't mean we wouldn't fancy winning the lottery all the same. Just to make sure.” The painter and I laughed. Even with all that drink in him, he had a point.

It suddenly seemed to me that what we all want isn't so clear at all. I had often felt like I was just a few steps from total satisfaction, ticking things off a vague list of desirables; love, sex, money, marriage and a three bedroom house with a garden. Ingredients for a good life. But it's not that simple. You might get all those things and still not be satisfied. We're never satisfied. But here's the thing: I was satisfied that night and it didn't feel how I'd expected it to. It was like that feeling I'd had at the cemetery earlier that day. Like the evening would go on forever, slowly, and I wanted it to. I felt like we had time to say anything, everything, and that there was no hurry. The seats were comfortable. The house was warm. I can't explain.

The television was still on, still showing a documentary about astronomy. I stood up and walked over to the window to look for stars. It was a clear night and I could make out a few. Then for some reason I thought of teeth. I thought the stars might be giant glowing teeth in the sky. It doesn't make sense but I didn't care. It seemed totally true.

© 2013: William Kraemer.

Thoughts on a London Plane Tree

Thoughts on a London Plane Tree

I notice it glowing from a gutter

Puddle and look up to see it

Maimed and naked, resentful

Of the tree surgeon’s pruning,

Or of that grim stave of transit,

The road.

                  But wait, the tree doesn’t resent.

It doesn’t think in blunt English, it doesn’t

Blunt think at all. If it has any tendencies,

It wields them with ardent Sloth.

But that’s no sin, a tree moving slowly.

There is no sin for a tree.

See how blunt my thinking is?

It crashes against the tree

Like a bead of rain, grasping almost

None of it.

Still, I don’t intend to give up.

Rain doesn’t give up after one drop.

I think trees must be awake

In some slow wise, must possess a gnarled sensibility.

Or at the very least, they are words spoken by the soil.

This one here is bursting with stillness.

It carves the air with numberless green-blooded swords,

Deciding to leaf or unleaf in step with the cadences

Of rainsong, the bulb flashes of day, the night’s blinks,

And the axial leanings of the great pedestal orb

In which it is plugged.

I stop to watch an invisible thought

Curling from a branch like guesswork. It might outlast me, unfurling

Arboreal inferences at the pace of an hour hand’s hour hand.

Watching a thought? I mean watching it being

Lively as a brick, livelier than a whole pile

Of bricks, and far more elegant than any built thing.

It is an ur-elegant primordial autobuilder, aesthetic ancestor

Whose swoops and jaggednesses are the original

Effortless style – but, unlike any human arrangement,

Actually effortless.

                                   Not that trees don’t labour:

They grow, stand fast, and tote the sky,

They hold off the rain, point out the stars, and guard the world

As seed-sprinkled sentinels dotted across the earth. They labour,

But they do not design themselves. Their shapeliness

Is our construction – though one may hang over a mirror

Pond for centuries, apparently dangling lovingly

Towards itself.

                            I dangle towards trees, lovingly.

My words are small and fleeting,

They land for a moment

On a branch and then are gone.

Metrocount

Metrocount

I count. Not one two three four five... More like one one one one one. I have a little machine that deals with that accumulation of symbols for me, otherwise I would lose count and there’d be gaps on my data sheet. My hand-held counter cannot lose count. It is a precision instrument. I understand they use the same counters at nightclubs, the bouncer clicks once for each person entering and they stop letting people in when its hits a certain number to abide by fire-safety regulations.

But I am counting cars – any motorised vehicle with four or more wheels.

I am stationed at a different roadside location each day with my hand-held counter and a clipboarded data sheet. Each hour on the hour I write down the number on the sheet and reset the counter to start again.

∞

I am merely the mechanism that causes the count, the eyes that see what is to be counted. The numbers themselves are in the mechanical mind my hand, so my thoughts have a little freedom to roam.

In the morning I feel fresh and clear for the first hour, my thoughts held taut in a low background hum,
like the muffled noises of someone waking in an adjoining room. Then around an hour in I start to hear my thoughts a little more clearly. My hand works almost on its own, clicking along to the quells and surges of traffic. My thoughts shifting, sifting, not quite vocal but somehow increasingly solid as the afternoon sets in. I pore over all manner of things.

Like what other kind of work I could do. Gardening maybe. Or street sweeping. I see both of these professions often as I am posted in different places around London. I like the look of street sweeping. Hundreds of times I've been on the point of asking a street sweeper what the work is really like when they're right next to me, but I've never dared. Counting cars doesn't boost confidence.

∞

I get asked for a light so much I've started carrying a lighter. One man shouted at me for not having a lighter. He said he'd asked everyone. He took it personally. He screamed in my face. I stood stock still save my thumb jolting to the traffic passing behind him – still counting. Everything seemed to go quiet after his scream. I could smell tobacco and his bacon based breakfast on my face. I stared into nothing, unfocussing my eyes and willing his disappearance. He suddenly turned and marched away. I let go a deep breath and released myself back into the job. Solace, even in the fumes that licked my face clean of his foul spittle.

∞

Today my tiredness was worse than ever. I am not sleeping enough. I dropped off standing bolt upright in the middle of my three o'clock hour. Nothing to lean on. I shut my eyes for a moment and it was longer than a moment. I woke up with the pavement sloping towards me. I caught myself just in time, stumbling to a crouch. I'd probably only been asleep a few seconds. Maybe a minute. I didn't know you could sleep standing up. I must've looked strange, a sleeping statue. I slapped myself hard in the face and clicked the counter furiously to make up for lost numbers. I clicked each car double for the next minute or so. I care about the rectitude of the numbers. Ifajobsworthdoingitsworthdoingproperly.

∞

People with time to kill or rage to spill approach me because I don't appear to be doing very much. It is often the mad, the lonely, or those mad with loneliness. But you never know. An old man stopped at my side this morning. Age had set in heavy so he could only walk very slowly – it had taken him at least five minutes to cover less than a hundred meters. He stopped beside me and smiled. His eyes were folorn. I gave him a perfunctory smile, not wanting to encourage a conversation.

“They say it'll rain later so I went for me run in the morning” he said, puffing out a chuckle, his eyes sadder still. I nodded and tried to click louder so he'd see that I was busy. He looked around him as one does having reached the summit of a mountain. I watched him watching a tree sway in the wind, still counting cars peripherally.

He turned back to me with a face that spoke of having tried all the other options. The tree wouldn't engage him so I was his last hope. His face was pleasant in spite of his melancholy – beautiful in wrinkles.

“Whats that you're doing lad?” he said, “Counting the seconds? A clock will do that for you,” he wheezed a laugh. I couldn't hold back a smile and his face bloomed with the reciprocated joy of my smile. He drank the merest drip of my mirth as though it would save him. I was happy with his wit, it was uncommon. I let my guard down a little and was about to speak when he spoke again. “I know what you're up to, really, counting cars for the government. Its a tough job I bet. Tires the eyes eh.” I nodded. “So I won't get in your way any more” he said, “Wouldn't want to get you fired or something.”

He shuffled around, feet barely lifting off the ground, and I realised with a pang that he had walked all this way just to speak to me. He wasn't walking past me. He had spent the past five minuted dragging himself along the pavement just to see if I could be roused to conversation. I hadn't said a word and now he was going. My guts churned with regret. He was still only a couple of meters away but he had his back to me and was resolutely departing. I made an internal vow to be kinder. To give people a bit more credit. They aren't all crackpots out to ruin my day.

∞

Black coffee from a flask. Thats the stuff. Soup sometimes. Bananas always. I get a lunchbreak in the middle of the day but I get hungry before it so I eat with my freehand. One of my front teeth is still loose from when I brought the counter to my mouth and bit it. The sandwich was in the other hand. Or was I trying to bite it out of existence. Swallow the statistics and digest them, bound for the sewers...

∞

I count. If I don't count, I don't count. There's some sort of pun there. It occurs to me often, to work out some sort of gallows joke about the tenuous monomania of my profession, how hard you must work to make yourself feel meaningful, and even then... But instead, when I hap upon that plan of thought, I end up just repeating variations of the phrase in my head, or under my breath... I count. I don't count. If I can't count I won't count. I won't count if I don't count. I'll do counting. I'll die counting...

∞

I live in fumes. They clog me up. I am being slowly murdered by invisibles. My skin turns grey. I check my reflection in puddles and begin to worry. I might as well smoke. Start using my own lighter, inhale a bit more death than I have to – quicken the full saturation, the fumigated cell-count... yes, counting. I can't get away from it. And somehow I count all the wrong things and let the seconds, hours, years pass by uncounted. The years have piled up like a crash. Is it already 1983?

∞

I have started bringing a little pocket radio to work. With headphones I can listen with almost full engrossment and still do my job. This'll keep my brain alive. The news is strange to me though. I haven't heard of some of these countries. I'm losing touch. Time to reform that. Come on BBC, fill me in.

∞

I sit on the sharpest edges. Rest my backside on the most inhospitable perches, sloped walls, spikey hedges. I've sheltered under the thinnest awnings, even crouched in the shade of bins. The craft of self-care is subtle and can make small things generous. But sometimes I have to stand all day on flat asphalt with not so much as a bottle cap to sit on. So my calves are strong. Sitting is bad for you anyway. The world of office-sitters are having their backs damaged by slouching in chairs. I heard on the radio that for most of human history only people of high status had any sort of chair at all. And even they sat cross legged on a simple raised platform, the backrest was only supposed to be ornamental. Now that chairs are mass produced we are encouraged to lean back. But that's bad for our backs. I'm better off in that respect. If I do sit, I make a stool of a bollard. No backrest.

∞

And then the weather. The sun pummels me. Or the wind whisks me in the windiest corners. Whirlwinds of leaves and plastic bags take me for a statue and weave about me. I have known rain to fall for three solid weeks. No waterproofs exist that can answer to such wildness. So I dissolve sometimes, slip down into myself and an autopilot takes over. He is not summonable though, this pilot; otherwise I'd have him do my job all the time, I'd sleep standing up beneath his hard-work. But no, he isn't at hand when I want him. He falls to work unpredictably when I fall into this strange coma.

Then I fade to a grey brick mottled street wall paper and people turn to cough in my face, not seeing me. Dogs piss on me. Birds land on me. I am a wall that dust scuttles along, that the wind buffets, brushes, nudges. An empty crisp packet scrapes along to feed at my feet. What does it want? To be replenished? I am not a crisp packet refill station, I tell it, in silence.

∞

There was wild garlic by the side of the road where I was posted today, Totteridge: A bit more rural than usual. I picked it and put it in my soup. There was also an abandoned sofa right where I was assigned to stand. I was surprised to find that the sun-warm sofa did not smell of urine and was comfortable. I lounged through my work. Some days are better than others.

∞

I am lost and found in a still standing instant. The cars blur but still I count on them. Am I merely an appendage? I the sentient crud that clings accidentally to the purposeful counting hand, like the turd of a goldfish, slow motion flag-like flapping from its anus. A statistician's cipher, statistical statistic, I statisticise, collapsing in on that singular point in space and time, the singular point of it all. But what is the point, all this? The cars can't all have places to get to. There aren't so many places as that.

∞

At least I am accountable. It is vindicating. There's a man who drives around London checking all of the enumeration agents are at their posts. If he didn't check we could just fake our data sheets and lie in bed all day. So this enumeration overseer visits on random days. Not often, but the method has a panopticonic stealth. You never know when he might be a little way up the road watching. But I never misbehave on purpose. I know how important my job is, the figures I produce are vital. I have a degree in town planning so I do know about it.

∞

Sometimes I can hear my brain decaying, seeping out of my ears and dripping into the gutter. All that studying to end up doing this. So I remind myself. The design of the whole city hinges on my counting. And yet it doesn't... But if litter could vote. If fumes could... I'd be Duke – no – I'd be Count. Ha! Count von Zählen - roadside ghost-god presiding over the surging commuter veins, engine thunder, and lunglorn petrol; with eyes that skim the passage of time, the passages of tin, of boxed up human flesh zooming endlessly. I see faces in the fabled long grass of sunny weekends, darkening. I stay curtained in on the weekends.

∞

I am being replaced by a little metal box, I'm sure of it. They count vehicles. I'm convinced they'll install these everywhere and sack us all. Metal boxes don't need a pension, don't have sick days.

A pneumatic hose is stretched across a road. One end of the hose is plugged off to keep dirt and water from being sucked into the hose, and the other end is connected to what looks like a metal shoebox on the curb. Each time a vehicle drives over the hose, a pulse of air is generated which is detected by an air switch in the box. It counts the vehicle axles, and if two hoses are stretched across the same lane in parallel, it can determine vehicle speed and axle spacings, as well as the direction of travel.

Ned Ludd! Thou shouldst be living at this hour: England hath need of thee. I'll have to sabotage these infernal shoeboxes on my own – accompliceless. It is apt that they should resemble shoe boxes, since a sabot is a shoe. A wooden shoe. They threw them into the automated looms to sabotage them, and the Luddite was born. So I am told. I'd better get me a sabot. A clog to clog up the mechanism, ha!

∞

So I went and broke one in the night. It was very difficult. I'd imagined just stamping on it a bit but the thing is probably designed to be impervious to the hardest kick a drunkard can bestow (even one wearing clogs, which I wasn't). I had to saw through the chain that locked it up and then throw it off a stairwell a few times. I managed to dent it quite a bit. Maybe it was still in working condition. But I threw it in the Thames. It can count the fish.

The pointlessness hit home almost immediately. I had only succeeded in costing some faceless company a few quid. I was a minor nuisance. I found myself counting cars in my head on the way home as if in recompense. To placate the statistical gods for the hole I made in their proceedings. I got a beer and sat on the curb, my clicking-thumb twitching empty-handed, Lady Macbething, as if a certain feverish count of clicks would make up for the drowned box.

∞

Well, I haven't lost my job after all. They seem to be keeping me on despite my non-metallic human body. I will try to be more of a metal shoebox from now on. I'll know no hardship. I'll be a hard ship. A shard hip. The fossil of a shard of hip. The lost dust of a fossil of hardship. I will reach the end bravely, gladly, goodly. I will go mad. Since the only glad here is mad glad.

∞

My judgement begins to bend. I was listening to a documentary about lichen on radio four. Fascinating. Lichen can endure severe dry periods, when there's no moisture to thrive on, by entering a metabolic suspension called crytobiosis. In this state they can endure extremes of temperature, radiation and drought. I was more than usually captivated by this and wanted to turn up the volume so I went pocket searching to turn the knob. I couldn't find it. Then I tried to follow the wires from my ears to find the radio. But there were no wires. There were no headphones in my ears. My head swam in a spinning garland of lights and the documentary fell silent.

Hearing voices? Yes. I remembered the pocket radio had been broken for two years. I sat down hard on the cold pavement. O, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven! Keep me in temper. I would not be mad.

∞

I made it to retirement age just in time. The metal shoeboxes have taken over. They say there are to be no new human recruits in the trade. They're hoping we all quit, retire, or die. I almost did all three at once. It was precarious. But I'll stick to the one. Retire dignified and step out as calm as I can.

∞

It's been years now but no escape at night: I dream I'm back on the roadsides again, clicking away. But something is always slightly wrong. Rain or a faulty counter. The data sheet blows away in the wind. Exasperating. I dream so much you'd think I miss it. Then there's a worse dream in which I'm shrunk down to a pea-size and made to work inside a Metrocount box. I am its live-in innards counting day and night. Eating only flies and ants (the size of dogs to me). Soon this is indistinguishable from the anguish of my not dreaming days. My figurings are weak. I don't know which this is any more. I don't count any more.

Beetroot.

Since antiquity the beetroot has been credited with arousing, curing, purging, and cleansing all manner of bodily conditions or ailments. Aphrodisiac; promoter of hair regrowth; soother of earache, headache, intestinal pains and chilblains; curer of hangovers, dandruff and garlic breath.

So much for all that. Suffice to say it is a powerful little thing. And since today’s abiding paradigm of food value is healthiness, recent focus has for the most part been on the beetroot’s vitamins and minerals, its antioxidant and anticarcinogenic properties, and even its alleged capacity to lower high blood pressure. But I say again: so much for all that. I am not denying the importance of health or medical history, I just want to explore the beetroot for myself unmediated by statistics and factoids.

Beetroot occupies an odd place in the hearts and minds of human beings. Their tenacious red pigment is obviously the central point of focus. It stains hands, chopping boards and usually any other ingredient it touches. Because it gets everywhere, it tends to be viewed as an irritating side effect. But isn’t there also something deliciously menacing about the incarnadine stain of a beetroot? Doesn’t a chopped beetroot provoke bloody thoughts on the fringes of our minds? We may rationally know we are chopping up a root vegetable, but we must also subliminally register the visual similarity to the gory work of a butcher or perhaps even more sinister instances of bloodied hands and knives. I for one always have the faint sensation that I am slicing open a heart when I chop a beetroot. In the indistinct basement chambers of the mind, blood and beetroots have an inescapable partnership.

There is also the distinctive earthy taste. A taste so earthy that the uninitiated beetroot eater might reasonably ask if there has been some mistake in the preparation: if some actual earth has not accidentally got into the vegetable itself.

In fact, geosmin is the organic compound responsible not only for the earthy taste and aroma in beetroot but also for that pleasant smell which occurs when rain falls on dry earth.

But to return to the vegetable itself and engage with it in person, instead of through lyrical hand-waving postulations, I went and bought a fresh raw beetroot for myself. I cleave towards minimalism, thrift and ease. Mainly just thrift and ease.

Beetroot. A most magnificent thing. Like an embarrassed potato, blushing, with a fancy outfit.

So I’m going to have a large beetroot as a meal in itself. It’s actually even easier than baking a potato. All you have to do is wash the beetroot, cut off most of the stalk, leaving an inch or so on and then wrap it in kitchen foil and put it in the oven for 45 minutes. As with potatoes you can alter the oven time for the size – since mine is huge I’ve left it in for an hour.

When you take it out of the first you’ll want to remove the skin. This can be done with a kitchen towel (to stop you burning your fingers). Apply a tiny bit of pressure and it rubs off almost effortlessly.

This done, you can chop it up into bite-size chunks and season it with salt, pepper and a little extra virgin olive oil. With exciting visuals, a unique taste, a subtle aroma and a pleasingly crunchy taste (quite unlike the mush of a baked potato), I assure you that the baked beetroot is a consummate experience all on its own.

Just make sure you don’t get a fright when it stains both your liquid and solid excreta a deep red. There’s no need to phone a doctor. It’s not blood. One really shouldn’t end a beetroot rhapsody on such an unseemly theme so I shall now try to redirect your thoughts with this picture of my friend Jack holding slices of beetroot into the shape denoting how we should all feel about eating them.

Floccule

Untitled, a photo by William Kraemer on Flickr.

The long cloud ivories await God's hands
To play sky piano for dulcet rain.
Looking on, a fading moon understands
That this great instrument was formed in vain:
No hands will come to carve the mist a song,
No ditty will jostle the cold high blue
The disappearing moon knows just whats wrong:
The day steadily brightens hue by hue,
Twisting the vapourous octaves awry
And slow motion smudging an un-played scale.
Now, godly digits could emerge and try,
but the ruins of cloud would say in braille:
"We are some scattered blobs of water fluff,
piano-time was just a luck-born bluff."

Trope

A trope tree, bearing tropes where leaves would be,

Appears to me as Autumn’s tarnished hearts

Are gradually charging the auburn fee

Whose sum is fallen skins, as Green departs.

I wait - and soon a trope is loosed to twist,

A paper drill bit spiral-slicing air;

Perhaps aware that it cannot desist,

Being deciduous beyond repair.

Unlike a leaf, this trope - now in my hand -

Blushes and says ‘I won’t blemish or rot.

I will stay fresh forever, a live strand

In the mind’s formaldehyde, unforgot.’

It’s plain to see this is a hopeless trope:

Craving a summit, barely on a slope.

Alternate Endings:

i

What hubris! Such audacious ego scope!

I’ll lay the blame for all this on the trope.

ii

Since I’m the one whose talent stands or falls

This trope alone cannot improve my scrawls.

iii

Beholding this ambition’s foolish scope

I’m shamed into disowning my keen trope.

iv

But, sad to feel that I admit no hope

It sinks into decay - thus dies my trope.

v

‘Doubtful’, I tell it, ‘as I’m the one whose

Lack of expertise makes certain you lose’.

vi

You will rot within a minute or two,

I say, and it begins to, right on cue.

vii

Hopeless, I tell the trope, this is my first

Sonnet, you won’t live very long un-nursed.

A Paper Fate

I am a character in a second hand book. Possibly out of print. Probably lost, forgotten behind other books on the bookshelf and caked in dust. I don’t really know. But in here I live out my life again and again in textual silence, as long as the ink remains – maybe even afterwards, I’m sure I’d remember my lines and directions. I’ve had enough practice.

Because you see a book, when left alone, reads itself through at a steady pace, like an audienceless cast rehearsing a play. Then, reaching the end, and knowing nothing but itself, it returns to the beginning to re-live it all again, exactly to the letter and at the same speed, to the metronome of paper.

You’ve no idea how I yearn to get done with some parts speedier than others – or skip them altogether. The first dozen pages of chapter three always fill me with a heavy boredom: a whispered altercation with a pompous, half-deaf librarian. It could contain humour but it doesn’t, it just drags on and gets nobody anywhere. Sometimes I want to stop whispering and shout at the old fool but I can’t. It isn’t written that way.

And there are parts I’d love to linger and enjoy. Like in chapter six when I’m lying in her arms, the half empty bottle of wine forgotten on the window sill and the warm sounds of a summer evening reaching in through the window as she explains the layout of her childhood home in vague murmurs and I listen enraptured. But no. My cruel prison admits no tarrying or fast forwarding; I must march to the beat of the page. No escape, no entreaty.

It is currently chapter four and she is here next to me. She is talking but I’m not listening. I don’t need to. I know her lines by heart. My mind wanders.

I love the soft curves of her hair, the way it frames her round face. But I’ll never tell her. I’ve no choice. And she’ll never know how I adore those dark green shoes she keeps on the mantle piece, how I’d like to borrow them since they look to be my size; nor will I ever be able to tell her how upset I get in chapter one when she snubs me.

I wonder what she really thinks of the fact that I make her porridge for breakfast after she stays over. I can’t interpret her faint smile. Is she laughing at me? Sometimes I worry it might be mockery, as though she might be laughing at my servile politeness and how it detracts from the unspoken rules of romance - rules that simmer beneath even the pulse of a one night stand. I should be more confident and manly perhaps.

Maybe she is also pleased when I am making her porridge since she knows that it is all I can do, that I am bound to do what I do. Is there even any point in my interpreting her glances since she, like me, may be thinking anything at all, erring wildly from the dictates of the dried ink mandate.

Perhaps she doesn’t think anything at all. Perhaps it’s a mistake that I have been given a mind when I have no mouth of my own, no means of communication. It must be a mistake – or a punishment? – that I while away the hours between my paper appearances with the thoughts that cannot but be infertile, no matter how powerful or important they may feel to me, since they are trapped in stagnant nowhere, never to be aired, never spent – as coins lost at the bottom of a well.

My mind even wanders sometimes while I’m delivering my lines… increasingly so. I’m not an actor you see so the quality of my delivery is not an issue, it can’t change. The text is the same every time and text is all I am. I am bound to be the same every time.

So it must be a mistake that I have these thoughts. I’m not even an agent. No physical apparatus. No motile volition. How do I even know the word motile? I’ve never read it anywhere, I’ve never read anything. I don’t properly exist. So where are these thoughts? Where will they end up?

Perhaps someone will find them, hear them somehow, as oddly and inexplicably as I came to have them. It’s a wretched hope but I cling to it: that my thoughts will seep from this exile to turn up for someone to know. To be found is not to have been lost in vain.

But now I’m about to speak, about to tell her I like her smile and then, wincing with embarrassment, flick my cigarette away into the Thames, exhaling a spout of smoke. Then she’ll inch along the balustrade to push her shoulder affectionately into mine, mumbling happy sounds into my chest pocket as we watch the cigarette’s slow motion purler into the low river. Here goes –

Forward

To begin, the groundwork, a quiet scene:
James, seated stealthily in book-like clothes
and rumpled concentration, reading the
breadth of the shelf for his degree, his hand
splayed over a book as though to stop it
wriggling free of his grasp; or we can look
over at the classics wing where a mob
of Aristotelians earnestly
line the mezzanine - and nasal guesswork
might trace a damp sandal scent that mars the
pleasant paper-mould mood in the alcoves.

But these books are only assailable
for the seasons of study, beyond which
your turnstile-triggering library card dies.
From then on it’s all business, from results
day to the graduation photographs:
Jonothan, David, and Sarah scatter
like dice thrown onto a map - careering
the hopeful ascent into internships,
interviews, networking, and jobs websites,
then the bar work they promise to give up
every week, the tenuous nepotism,
the spin so self-ennobling no honest
CV could house it; Despite hindrances –
like the recession - the immutable
advance trudges steadily on into
daily office captivity, coffee
breath that might be congenital, double
chins obscuring the top buttons of shirts,
the lunch time pints, the tumescent beer guts
seen sagging over belt buckles, then the
plush restaurants followed by the theatre,
or pretending to enjoy the opera;
greying, guffawing fatsos with laphroaig
filled tumblers surrounding tables, grunting
dull-eyed self-congratulation. Now the
unfettered grimace parties, disgruntled
human swellings with burgundy eczema’d
skin swilling infinite gin at hollow-smile
get-togethers…

But, focusing, these years
of faultless ironed shirts and thinning hair
shudder and divide to reveal two pub
bound suits - Harry, who they once called Hazza,
and Jeff, who noisily dredges up his
snot into his throat every few minutes -
as they loudly discuss the ample bum
and bust of their receptionist, neither
listening to the other - nor, really,
to themselves (undermining the function
of a conversation) - as a prelude
and practice for inebriation hour.
At a bleating from his pocket, Jeff stalls
to hock up sputum before answering.
Harry walks on thoughtlessly but, nearing
the chosen pub, has a thought nonetheless:
delving into his breast pocket he takes
out a small cylindrical pill vial and
automatically shakes it at his palm
unwittingly spilling a stray pellet
of fluoxetine onto the pavement.

Leaving him behind an instant later,
this pill will depart the spot plucked up snug
in the tread of a passing walker’s boot,
lodged in the aperture of the e in
berghaus, joining some gravel stowaways.
Before long the boots will be dipped in an
acrid puddle of splashed vinegar as
the wearer pauses at the threshold of
a chippy to consider the prices.
Reacting oddly with the vinegar,
the pill will begin to dissolve, losing
its shape, and disengage its rubber clamp
to froth and burgeon into a spectral,
lazily animated grey foam, like
a carbuncle on the concrete, causing
a very stoned metalworker to squint
down from his balcony through the dim street
lamplight, heart quickening, as he begins
to fear the proliferation and coup
of this giant-amoeba alien race,
one of whom would appear to be pulsing
insidiously right down there right now
oh god that cant be real its not real oh
god what is it it will take over and
melt us all in our beds it must be stopped.



But you can leave him there in a panic,
since he’s imaginary, while I stay,
as a fleshless voiceless voice on paper,
here between the page and itself, wrapped up
in its clean envelope of fictive thought,
lingering indefinitely to re-
read and consider how the initial
library hush could stray so far from itself,
dissolving the plot along with the pill…

So while I’m mired without past or future,
you have no choice but to move on ahead,
keeping with the forward motion of things,
where candles flicker (it’s compulsory,
even in still air) and the clock chisels
away - tck - at the hours you have left.

The aimless walk has served me well in recent years. I’m not talking about a single aimless walk but of aimless walking as a regular practice. It serves so many wonderful purposes and the more I do it, the more purposes and wonderfulnessess I find. I have practiced it solely within the very urban surroundings of London as the public transport network affords the aimless walker an almost certain protection against getting truly lost. There is always a bus or tube or trains station to take you back at least towards your home, always someone to ask for directions.

As a social activity it provides a wonderful atmosphere in which to chat, gossip or get stuck into some intellectual discourse. The landscape is ever moving and so the conversation, if it threatens to dry up, has ever new fuel provided by new architecture, new people, new plants, animals, adverts, art, and things you didn’t expect to see at all: things I can’t anticipate here. Even the most boring parts of town can harbour endless oddities, hidden secrets, or even charming blanknesses.

As Pissarro said ‘Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing.’ And it doesn’t take any special initiation to become one of these blessed folk. I feel it might be something like being a believer in a religion. Though I have no clerics, no holy text, and no church, still I feel like I’ve come to know a godlike personality. The personality happens to be place itself.

Any given place is an endlessly deep swarm of artifacts and curios, a palimpsest of whatever stories have occurred in and of the location. Not just human events and structures but those of nature, animals, plants, and the deadest of the dead: stones. Blank, empty spaces can hold even more intrigue then those that teem with convolution. Beheld in stark contrast to the usual business, a barren zone or landmark-less landscape is so alien it can elicit purer, simpler, deeper emotional or intellectual responses. And anyway, the emptiest place on earth is no longer empty when you, the observer, arrives to be in it, to experience it.

God in the Quad - by Ronald Knox

There was a young man who said, "God

Must think it exceedingly odd

If he finds that this tree

Continues to be

When there's no one about in the Quad."

REPLY

Dear Sir:

Your astonishment's odd:

I am always about in the Quad.

And that's why the tree

Will continue to be,

Since observed by

Yours faithfully,

GOD.

No place is without a genius loci (spirit of place). And you don’t need tools or jargon or specialised knowledge to decipher the spirit. Discovering anything at all (scientific and mathematic truths included) lies dormant in the observer more than in the outside world. We map our thoughts and expectations onto what we see. All is in the eye of the beholder. If some mysterious marks on a wall catch your attention and make you smile, make you think of something, make you stop and wonder, it’s not necessary to discover their true origin, their actual author. Though it may become your aim, art (or we might call it intrigue) can be found regardless of considerations of author, history, or understanding. We can look at the sky when it turns an unusual colour and say “I haven’t a clue how it’s gone that colour or what’s causing it but I find it beautiful.”

So the aimless wander needs only to be open to the possible intrigue of possibly anything. Having mentioned religion already here is another similarity: I find myself preaching openness. Urging that you be open to the ever-present possibility of appreciating the world around you. As I preach this openness I squirm inwardly with sensation that I am repeating something similar to what I’ve heard so often from preaching theists. “You just have to be open to God”. Nodding and smiling as I have done at this entreaty, I have always resolutely decided I would not be open to God since it didn’t mean anything at all. Standing in the atheist’s paradigm, as I do, the notion of becoming open to this almighty ghost strikes me as intellectually impossible and no more than a weird sadomasochistic mind-ritual in which I subscribe to a fallacy so forcefully as to begin to hallucinate His actuality.

I’m well aware that my religion of the aimless wanderers who worship the variety of existence due to the endless intrigues of their own minds stands, in a sense, on the same ground as conventional religion when looked at by the as-yet-uninitiated awanderer (atheist is to theist what awanderer is to wanderer). So although I feel no less devout about the wandering cause I can understand if those standing in a conflicting paradigm see nothing but nonsense in my position.

A Snippet of 2009.

I read on the train. I very rarely read anywhere else. If I do it is probably on a bus - so most of my reading happens in a moving environment.

But most of it, almost all of it, happens on the Metropolitan Line between Baker Street and Uxbridge. I have become used to the rocking and shaking of my seat, of the whole carriage, as I read. It is a comfort like being in a pram, a cot, or a mother’s arms. Rocked back and forth in the mother’s arms, the first dance of life, the baby’s first taste of rhythm. My deity mother shakes the train as I slumber fitfully in my bookdreams.

Yes, reading is a kind of sleep. Reading is receding from the world, forgetting the body and ones surroundings. Yielding to the dream of the text. In my comforting commute, as my zooming pram shakes away my woes, I read and read. Woken only by the terminated train, whose unprecedented stillness, and whose long loud hiss, speak of a tired and reposeful deity who wishes for some rest herself. No more rockabybaby, time to get up. And so the day starts as the book ends. Like any child I mourn this departure from comfort.

Chime

This junction of a cycle path and a footpath saw a lot of traffic,

both feet and wheels, and a lot of bell-ringing near-collisions.

Now, the flock of birds that made their home in the giant tree

towering over this intersection became so used to the chime

of the bicycle bells that it became part of their language.

They spoke it fluently, like natives, even reproducing that

dissonant metallic reverb that truncates the traditional trill.

None could tell it apart from the real thing. And so, in the quieter

moments of earliest morning or perhaps of dusk you might see

a pedestrian twirl around in fright, head swivelling frantically,

sure that at least five angry cyclists were approaching so fast

as to be nearly already on top of him. But in fact there were

no cyclists and the ear-jostled victim would walk on flummoxed.

What is this? Mischief? Such was the ventriloquism of those

birds that no human ever solved the mystery, not one ever even

looked upwards. I knew, of course, but then I’m one of those birds.

Polonious: What do you read my lord?

Hamlet: Words, words, words.

Here are some words about words:

loganamnosis

noun. - An obsession with trying to recall a forgotten word.

logastellus

noun. - "A person whose enthusiasm for words outstrips his knowledge of them" - John McClellan.

logocentrism

noun. 1 - Literary analysis that focuses on words and language to the exclusion of non-linguistic matters such as the author's individuality or historical context.

2 - Excessive attention paid to the meanings of words or distinctions in their usage hence, logocentric.

logopoeia

noun. [1929 Ezra Pound in New York Herald-Tribune 20 Jan. XI. 5/4] - ‘The dance of the intellect among words’, that is to say, it employs words not only for their direct meaning, but it takes count in a special way of habits of usage, of the context we expect to find with the word... It holds the æsthetic content which is peculiarly the domain of verbal manifestation and can not possibly be contained in plastic or in music.

logocracy

noun. - A community or system of government in which words are the ruling powers.

logodaedalus (or logodaedalist)

noun. - One who is cunning in words.

logodaedaly

noun. - Arbitrary, cunning or capricious coinage of words; skill in adorning a speech; ‘verbal legerdemain’.

logolatry

noun. - ‘Worship’ of words; unreasonable regard for words or for verbal truth

logology (or logonomy)

noun. - The science of words.

logogogue

noun. - A person who lays down rules about words; a language dictator.

logolepsy

noun. - An obsession with words.

logolept

noun. - A word maniac; verbivore, logophile.

logomachist

noun. - One given to disputes over or about words (also logomach).

logomachy

noun. A dispute over or about words; controversy marked by verbiage.

logomisia

noun. - Disgust for certain words.

logopandocie

noun. - Readiness to admit words of all kinds.

logophile

noun. - A word lover or word buff

logorrhea

noun. - Excessive and often incoherent talkativeness or wordiness.

logorrheic

adjective. - Characterized by excessive use of words.

Underlined In Red

Even my heart beats mistakes,
Though one might be fooled by its fakes.
Its hazardous drum couldn’t beat true
By accident. Barely a drum, more a few

Crumbled quiet knockings in my torso
Like drips, bits, blobs, or like crumbs.

A thrum rung crumb, empty lung and still-tongue sung
A brittle crumbeat.
So small it mocks its own large hunger.

But I live through its accents,
All of them wrong.
Shrug in the mire of nonsense
Glum dragged along.

And sing this drugged song

My résumé is fillable with two syllables:
Just one word, wholeness averred:
An iamb that I am:
A noun I take to town:

Mistake.

My Walk To Work

On my walk to work I walk fast. I take big strides and breathe deeply. It is exhilarating. The more I walk, the more I like walking. Walking and thinking.

I am developing a taste for certain types of walking, a distaste for certain others. I love walking uphill – it stretches my calf muscles and gives me a sense of upward progress; greater, higher things await - a prize at the top of the mountain. I dislike walking downhill. My socks rub against my heels and my toes knock against the inside of my trainers. I don’t think I was designed to walk downhill. If hell has a chain gang then they must be constantly walking downhill in shoes that are slightly too large. If heaven has an urban ramblers association they will walk uphill forever. But, of course, I don’t want to walk uphill forever. The urban fluctuations are part of the joy.

I walk with avid determination, overtaking nearly everyone else I encounter. When I notice that someone is walking as fast or faster than me I am immediately charged with a competitive spirit. I must overtake everyone. On the edge of my conscious thought dances the notion that if anyone is walking faster than me then I am being left behind - not merely left behind literally, as I actually am in these cases, but left behind more meaningfully, in life. This is, of course, ridiculous. I am far too competitive. Too often I find myself competing with people who have not the faintest clue that they are involved. One day I will learn to relax. One day.

When I grow up I would like to be able to relax. But for now I must squeeze the day like a sponge. I must vibrate like an atom. I must not waste a second. Every wasted moment stabs into me like a razor sharp hand, or like the chiseled hand of a muted clock - silently ticking; ominously, inexorably eating time, crunching silently, silently – silent except for the ticking, the ticking which I can hear. Tick tick tick...

But I spend an hour walking to work and an hour walking home from work. Two hours of walking every week day? Yes, two hours every day. Are these two hours not wasted? No no; most certainly not. When I walk I am thinking. This is the closest I get to relaxation. The steady rhythm of my deep breathing acts as an antidote to the mas-tick-ating clock, I no longer hear it munching away at time. My steps beat out a glaring defiance that drowns it out – I am walking faster than it can eat, I am moving ahead of time. My legs pulsate happily below me, like my own little animals, working away at the music of motion. So I think, my mind wanders -- wanders and wonders. My eyes rove and watch the passing streets.

Although my walk to work follows the same path every day, things do not stagnate. The fabric of the city is constantly ruffling. I leave my house at 7:30am. This is earlier than most people so the streets are rather empty. Especially the ones I walk through as I begin my journey. John Ruskin Street, Dale Road, Cooks Road, Ravensden Street... they are quiet, residential areas. In particular I enjoy watching the street sweepers.

In autumn I usually see more than one street sweeper. As I approach I notice the leafless prelude to their efforts, the parts they have already swept. And passing directly by them I pay close attention to their skillful use of the large broom. I can’t help but inject a certain heroism into this activity, this art! Sweeping our streets, these men are artisans in a unique way. Watch them. Look you! They are not drones (though by their faces, I fear some think they are), they are not soulless – they possess a honed technique. It is not as easy as it looks – and I love how it looks. There is a real beauty in their sweeping.

Perhaps I’m mad to think so; I know these are not the happiest of men. Not at all. But they are admirable and they are doing something real, something so very real. Perhaps I am too keen on tidiness – and I am very keen on tidiness – or perhaps I give my thoughts too rosy a tint. Yes. Perhaps.

So my walking usually calms the tempest of time, smothers my fear of wastage, and I stride wholesomely on. But sometimes walking is not enough. Sometimes I need to make sure that I feel I am still progressing, learning, building... So to avoid any of that painful time wastage I practice my human beatbox. I make drum beats with my mouth. Secretly, I tell myself, this is part of my project to become a Homo Universalis, a man of broad and varied skills and learnings, a polymath. Or, at the very least, someone who has learnt things, someone who has thought things, someone with interests, passions and skills. Someone full of surprises. Is this a lot to ask? Probably. But I ask this of myself. I can't help it.

Along I walk, beatboxing in time while humming underneath, gasping for breath after four bars, grunting and heaving, burbling, mumbling, almost gurgling sometimes... I beatbox my way through the streets. When I first became enamoured with the human beat, the mouth-drum, I would only practice at home - in the safety and solitude of my room or that of the bathroom (which has good harmonics). But gradually my confidence has grown. It started in Southampton, where I was at university, in the quieter streets there, at times, when I realised no one was near, I would indulge heavily. "Ba boom boom bap, t-ch t-ch boom bap!" Sometimes, when I became carried away, I would suddenly notice someone nearby, perhaps they had just got out of a car or come out of a house, in an instant I would fall silent. But soon I realised that nothing would come of it if I continued, if I held the beat and walked on, not caring whether others could hear. That is not to say that I now beatbox fearlessly in public. There are certain people who can still cause me to fall silent: those who might understand what I'm doing. Young men, for example, especially those dressed in hip-hop regalia, are most likely to know what I am up to with my strange noises. I do not want an understanding ear listening in. My walking beat is a music of solitude. If it must be heard by others I want it to appear nonsensical, mad, foolish, odd... because no one approaches (or for that matter reproaches) a mad man.

Along the three miles of pavement I see many of the same faces every morning. And more often than not I see them at the same point in my journey. I pass a man and his daughter leaving their house to cycle off down the road together, both heavily clad in reflective gear and flashing lights. The father always cycles between his daughter and the traffic at an angle behind her. They roll along peacefully and their punctuality always pleases me - they leave their house at 7:35.

The same fat woman waits for the southbound P5 bus on Dale Road every morning as I pass at about 7:40. She stands reading a book, solitary and absorbed. She is always alone and always reading. I sometimes try to work out what she is reading but can never manage to spy the spine. She holds her books wide open with the spine facing flat to the floor. You'd have to crouch in front of her to see the cover. One of these days I'll crouch down and tie my shoe laces or stoop to pick something up and steal a glance. It struck me recently that, after months of vague scheming and planning how to discover the book I had never thought of just asking her. But this kind of interaction makes me uncomfortable. I imagine she would feel uncomfortable, if not because it is none of my business, then because she might think I was after something else. After all, one doesn't expect people in the street to take an interest in your chosen reading. And I am just a person in the street, as far as she is concerned. I doubt she even knows my face, though I know hers, as she is always engrossed in a book.

As I walk down Ravensden Street, two cyclists unlock their bikes from the railings in front of their houses. The first one is a young woman, and then further down the street, a young man. They both wear helmets and full-body cycle suits of Lycra. Though they are neighbours about 10 houses apart they never speak to each other, they never look at each other. But, walking through like an unacknowledged ghost at 7:45, I look at them and smile. I enjoy their synchronicity with each other and with me.

My walk takes me past two comprehensive state schools (one of which I went to myself). Bopping in droves, I see duplicates of the characters I used to know at school. In particular I notice the boys who would have terrified me as a boy. I used to call them rudeboys. I still do. They haven't changed. But I, thank goodness, have. They no longer terrify me because they no longer see me. I do not exist to them. I am now a man with a beard, an adult, at least by appearance. They see straight through me. This is at once very odd and very liberating. When I was at school I wished so dearly that they would look straight through me and now that they do I can't quite believe it. There are moments when they erupt into boisterousness right next to me on the pavement, hitting each other, swearing, laughing brutally - sometimes I flinch, forgetting myself for a moment, preparing to run away as I would have done 10 years ago. Then I suddenly remember that I am invisible.

At 7:55 I reach Mi6, the fiercely guarded British Secret Intelligence building. Gazing up at the numerous security cameras lining the walls I sometimes catch sight of one that is moving about like a chameleon's eye, scanning inquisitively yet attached to a large and eerily stationary body. About once a week I notice a police officer on the pavement outside, methodically checking all items of street furniture surrounding the building from the bus stop to lamp posts and traffic lights. He wears a big bullet proof vest and squints at every paving slab with dutiful paranoia.

At 8 o'clock I am half way to work walking over the river on Vauxhall Bridge. Sometimes, when a thick morning mist drapes itself over the city, the bridge disappears into a spectral nothingness. The opposite side of the river is barely visible and the bridge looks as if it might continue indefinitely, stretching over a quiet ocean. Reaching the middle of the bridge is thrilling in the mist: neither side of the river are quite visible and the growling grey metropolis momentarily evaporates to leave me walking through a cloud.

Pimlico's opulent white houses surround me for the next episode of my walk and for the most part, I walk alone. The ludicrously rich inhabitants of this area are to be seen scurrying from their front doors into their luxury cars with their ridiculously uniformed children. I don't understand why Chelsea's private primary schools insist on clothing their students in almost theatrically dated outfits. Three year olds in breeches and berets, or tiny suits with cuff links. I'm probably exaggerating. But not much.

On Pimlico Road at 8:20 I pass the same beautiful woman every morning. She walks determined and fast, looking down, with a slightly pained expression on her face. I always hope she'll look up at me, at which point I plan to smile and thereafter... well, of course, we'll get married. I haven't figured out how my smile leads to marriage... fill in the blanks yourself and let me dream. She's so beautiful. But, as far as I know, she has never set eyes on me. My unrequited encounter with her signals the beginning of the Pimlico Road interior design district.

Shop after shop exhibiting cabinets, tables, chairs, and endless household items of absolutely no function whatsoever adorn carefully arranged window displays. None of these shops are open at such an early hour. But, positioned in the centre of this district of finery, lies Daylesford Organic, a cafe of sorts (though I'm sure "cafe" would strike both the staff and the clientele as far too vulgar a word to be appropriate here). Pampered dogs sit patiently beside botoxed woman of indistinguishable age, and impeccable make-up. Ineffably clean business men sit sipping coffee and reading the newspaper over an eccentric looking pastry.

Sloane Square hits with a sudden bustle and my quiet walk is over, my beatbox must stop. My legs are gratefully worn out, they surge with a glad fatigue as I slow down to weave through the crowds. The throngs push towards the tube station and I salmon against them, eventually slipping into the back door of my workplace. I am damp with sweat.

The oil company is rich and the offices are accordingly plush. The toilets and showers are what you would expect from a 5 star hotel. I've never been to a hotel but I know what I would expect from a 5 star one. The shower room is large enough to swing a cat in - a tiger. Blindingly clean white towels are provided. They are piled up on the bench neatly folded. There is a sink and a toilet beside the shower cubicle. Everything that could possible sparkle does sparkle and the walls are panelled with what looks and feels like marble. It probably is marble. I never get used to the sight of myself in the mirror peeling off my damp old t-shirt and removing my worn trainers in this majestic environment. I don't feel I belong there. This shower looks as though it were designed to wash people who are already immaculately clean.

Divine Contradiction



Not as divine as we all thought, one afternoon God fell to drinking. He had been a rigid abstainer for the past eternity but something, He felt, had changed. Something about the universe seemed different. There was something down on earth that they called postmodernism. It didn't so much feel like an affront on religion as many past movement had been. No, God had been reading some of these confusing postmodern texts. God felt as though His creation had produced something alien. He wondered, indeed, if these philosophers were not the spawn of some other deity. But of course not, He told Himself, I'm omniscient aren't I? I would know about that. Nonetheless, postmodernism was unnerving. These philosophers were not worshiping false Gods, they were affirming the omniprescence of contradiction, they were denying the possibility of truth... the enlightenment was falling apart but the secular were not returning to pious worship of mysterious symbols. Not quite. Those that did a lot of thinking, these philosophers, were discovering chaos, confusion, and uncertainty where before everyone had been certain that truth was hiding somewhere, the scientists would find it. No longer. It wasn't that science had died, far from it. It was philosophy that was dead or dying. Philosophy as the practice of seeking truths, arriving at truths, was being left behind, discredited. Philosophy was about ... what was it about? That was moot. But one thing was certain, and that, unfortunatly, was uncertainty.

So God, having noticed this with increasing alarm, decided that something must be done. But rather than conduct a miracle, God thought He might join in. He wasn't so sure He knew everything after all. For example, what would happen if He had some alcohol? He didn't know. There was no one to ask, no one knew more than Him about the universe but there were no clues as to what might transpire if a God became drunk. Moreover, was it a sin if He had a drink? He'd never considered such a thing posssible. The logic was becoming rather foggy here and He was beginning to sympathise more and more with this postmodernism malarkey. Contradictions were cropping up everywhere, why had He not noticed before? For example, His ignorance of the effects of alcohol on His transcendent body, despite His being omniscient, that was a contradiction wasn't it? An ignorant omniscient? He wasn't even sure.

So it didn't seem completely insane to try a drop of alcohol now, to partake in a bit of this confusion and perhaps maybe even understand it a little, if that made sense. Chosing at random He poured Himself a glass of sherry. It seemed to emanate a certain majesty that was fitting considering His presidency of the universe. Without much trepidation He raised the glass to His lips and took a sip. Its sharp bitterness was an unfriendly element in His mouth and He frowned thoughtfully. As the initial tang wore off and the drug hit home God leant back in His chair. There was something cathartic about this unpleasant liquid. Despite the taste He could see the appeal. Engaging so tangibly in a contradiction, as He felt He was, His thoughts turned again to the philosophers. The possible enormity of what He was doing did not seem to worry Him. Perhaps this was a new era. The paradox was no longer a freak accident, a bearded lady or two headed featus. No. The paradox had become a fashionable object. A kind of monacle through which to squint at existence. And who was to tell God that He couldn't have a go with this monacle?

Taking another sip of sherry, God looked down on the world from heaven and suddenly felt old. This alcoholic excursion... was it foolish? Was He like the middle aged parent who learns some slang to impress the children? This possibility depressed Him and, somewhat carelessly, He drained the glass. As it burned down His throat He inhaled sharply and found Himself murmuring "No one else will know anyway. I'll just have a few drinks and stay out of the way for the evening. What harm can it really do?" A questioning look appeared on His ancient face and He seemed to be asking himself something. "Why have I started thinking aloud?" He continued, "I suppose it must be something to do with this sherry. I better have some more... to be.... to be sure."