week 13 2024

hey

a cough that sounded like somebody shovelling gravel in a viaduct, and i started coming down with something.

lay still, ate yoghurt. ate grilled cheese. saw many, many people. the moment I cherished most was the end of something. wish i didn’t have to split. ate grilled cheese. ate yoghurt. lay still.

i’m quite comfortable with asymmetry. i think it’s easy to mistake symmetry for balance, but we’re made of different stuff. denser here, more space there. different stuff. it’s like, you know… splitting a bill evenly could mean each of us paying the same amount or each paying a fraction relative to what we have to spare. the bills were 30/70 because the income was 70/30. yeah, that’s another way to do it. and i have this much time, and this much energy, and this much to give. and you have that much and that much and that much. and that’s okay, that’s good.

i’m going to go on holiday tomorrow. anyone got any holidays going? maybe i’ll go to Dingle. that sounds cold, but you know that little spot where your feet are on the green green grass? and in front of you is the sea? and to the left of you is a sand dune? and a fella from Cork says “why you put a biscuit in my shoo?” and he says “i woke up in the sea and all you know, and i start falling over, but i’m in the sea so i start falling over real slow like?” and rona climbs into your tent and she puts the rimmel no.1 on you and kisses you and it changes your life? and you taste buckfast and you taste poitín and you smell like grass and mud and fire and salt water and tawny port? and she sang ninja turtles, and you first saw her all pixelated on a video on her best friend’s Nokia 5500 Sport? all pale fair skin and black hair and green eyes and sleeves pulled up so only the fingers and thumbs poke out and she sang ninja turtles and her best friend thinks that the two of you should fall in love and you do but she doesn’t? well, she does but it wears off quick? and in the car on the way home you glance out the window and there’s a road sign on the post and it’s an arrow pointing down and it says “NOW”? and that’s the first time you taste Buckfast. and that’s the first time you taste Poitín. and there was plenty of port and plenty of gin. but never warmed up on the cooling stones before. and never in the sea before.

anyway no that sounds cold. cold and wet and grey. could go the other way. eurostar. coach to portugal. could go to scotland. bournemouth. plymouth. redruth. liverpool. swansea. walton-on-the-naze. whitstable. but everywhere has all these significances, need a place with no significance. off to heaven, close the curtain. my skin smells different, can only mean one thing. if those ripples getting closer are echoes after all.

I’m still a little sick. and I look it. and I feel it. but my main pervasive feeling is this hope and this certainty that this thing that I love and I believe is something meaningful. and I’ll pack kate by kate moss in the peach totepack with the citrus neo and — damn, I yet again promised a sort of victorian christmas spectre of my dead grandfather that I’d get some before-midnight-sleep and have blown right through the deadline again. I hate breaking promises. especially to uninvited phantasms who come in through the gaps to haunt my kitchen cupboards, because if I can get them on my side maybe I can get them to show me how to slip between to the never taking place. anyway. glad to meet you, can’t wait to see the rest.