They put up strange shields over the glass of the windows at work. It gives the outside a strange twilight look. The sea is in a permanent dusk. I have a new desk at work now, which means that, when standing I have a perfect view of the ocean. I drink coffee and stare hypnotised at the waves. Well, between calls anyway. Someone said to me I looked so far away today. I nearly replied that I was staring at the horizon and looking for France.
Which I actually was doing.
I couldn't work out if it was clouds or Europe I was seeing.
Worcester has haunted me this week. I'm not sure why. I think I dreamt of it a few times over the past couple of night. Stood at the base of London Road hill, looking up into an autumnal distance. I don't know what it is I miss so much about Worcester. I have a strange longing for the place. I wish I could wake up there tomorrow. Just spend the day wondering around before heading back to Brighton again. One of the things I like about Worcester is the oldness of the place.
Brighton sometimes seems too new somehow.
No other news from Brighton, but there seems a very edgy vibe out on the streets tonight. A sense of, perhaps, encroaching violence. Maybe its the full moon. If it is a full moon. if it does effect people.
Think I'll stay in though.
Just to be on the safe side.
Friday, 21 January 2011
Tuesday, 18 January 2011
Later in January, a Strange and Drifting Coast
Moving further away from Christmas and the New Year now. That strange and drifting coast between January and early summer. Do we call it spring? No - spring is part of it though, but just a fraction.
This uninvestigated season is far larger than that.
I felt it today during a brief trip down the seafront. Warm sun. Sat on the pebbles reading Wolf Solent by John Cowper Powys. Air all clear and... well, not wintry, but not spring-like either. Hypnotic rhythms of the waves.
The pebbles felt wet beneath my fingers. - perhaps the retreating tides, but I remember rain last night too.
Ecstatic sleep last night. Unremembered dreams. Woke sometime in the small hours thinking about a play set for some kind of generic 'space' action figures. Echoes of a childhood toy that never existed. A labyrinthine space station moulded in plastic, with all manner of corridors, pulleys, spacecraft loading bays, and a detachable 'control-room' where the dark villain would plot to take over the universe.
All made sense at 2:00am.
Things do when you wake at night. Over the summer of 1996, waking at dawn with that strange feeling of euphoria, an implacable feeling of things making sense. When I woke, whatever made sense had vanished, though on one of these mornings I woke with the lines we make friends with the grass running through my head, and a dream-image, perhaps of a grassy field by a canal during a red sunset. More like a memory than a dream, though dreams are far more real than life of course.
'18th January 2011'.
I let the words roll around my mouth like bones, or dice.
They taste of something old and ancient, and not new at all. Something tall and narrow. An edifice constructed by some lost suburban civilisation.
(twenty years ago, walking with Edward round Hillingdon, obsessed with Samhain's 'Initium' album, the curly-wurly bridge over the A-40, lost in the orange street lamp light and the London skies behind, the bridge somehow representing January, always has been January since, suburban monolith, call up later January, call up the bridge)
But tonight, walking home and breathing in, I could smell, could taste the December just gone. That curiously burnt smell of winter 2010.
Something not more than seven or eight weeks old, but it seemed so very, very far away in my memory.
This uninvestigated season is far larger than that.
I felt it today during a brief trip down the seafront. Warm sun. Sat on the pebbles reading Wolf Solent by John Cowper Powys. Air all clear and... well, not wintry, but not spring-like either. Hypnotic rhythms of the waves.
The pebbles felt wet beneath my fingers. - perhaps the retreating tides, but I remember rain last night too.
Ecstatic sleep last night. Unremembered dreams. Woke sometime in the small hours thinking about a play set for some kind of generic 'space' action figures. Echoes of a childhood toy that never existed. A labyrinthine space station moulded in plastic, with all manner of corridors, pulleys, spacecraft loading bays, and a detachable 'control-room' where the dark villain would plot to take over the universe.
All made sense at 2:00am.
Things do when you wake at night. Over the summer of 1996, waking at dawn with that strange feeling of euphoria, an implacable feeling of things making sense. When I woke, whatever made sense had vanished, though on one of these mornings I woke with the lines we make friends with the grass running through my head, and a dream-image, perhaps of a grassy field by a canal during a red sunset. More like a memory than a dream, though dreams are far more real than life of course.
'18th January 2011'.
I let the words roll around my mouth like bones, or dice.
They taste of something old and ancient, and not new at all. Something tall and narrow. An edifice constructed by some lost suburban civilisation.
(twenty years ago, walking with Edward round Hillingdon, obsessed with Samhain's 'Initium' album, the curly-wurly bridge over the A-40, lost in the orange street lamp light and the London skies behind, the bridge somehow representing January, always has been January since, suburban monolith, call up later January, call up the bridge)
But tonight, walking home and breathing in, I could smell, could taste the December just gone. That curiously burnt smell of winter 2010.
Something not more than seven or eight weeks old, but it seemed so very, very far away in my memory.
Saturday, 15 January 2011
Five Notes in a Week haunted by Late November
1: I finally bought 'Wolf Solent' by John Cowper Powys for £4:00 from Snoopers Paradise in town today. I am hoping I will enjoy it. Over the past season - well, since last summer really - I've not really enjoyed reading new books that m,uch. Particularly not fiction. I don't know if this is the books I'm reading, or just me, but the last, well, year or so really, since finishing Bolano's 2166 last February. I have tried East European magic realism, contemporary literature, modern steam punk, fantasy, non fiction, J-horror... and nothing seems to hit the spot. I still read a lot of course, but mostly old stuff, short stories and the like. I hope this reading drought ends soon.
2: I really did enjoy using the writing prompt found here. I am very much looking forward to the prompt posted up next Monday. Personally, the thing I found most fascinating about writing it was how, instinctively, I came back to the things which I have always been fascinated by, namely time and the power of memory to haunt us. I wish i could comment on Na's entry too, but alas my commenting facilities are still down. I really must get it sorted out. I am sure it is something quite simple. I wish also that I could work out how to put the accent above the a in her name. I wish I would also stop going off on tangents.
3: A dream last night where I couldn't quite work out whether or not I was living back in Worcestershire. Walking with Andy through slushy landscapes. The courtyard of a farm. Pointing out to Andy the strange rural-industrial signs on top of a barn, advertising obscure farming machinery.
4: Strange white January days. Not anything really. Both bleak and clean. No weather. The days are getting slightly shorter though, but when I wake in the mornings it is still dark.
5: A week in which I have been haunted by the song 'Late November' by Sandy Denny. I bought the album last Saturday after reading s short article about her in that mornings paper. An utterly creepy song, made even more so by the fact that I can't quite work out just why its so strangely eerie.
2: I really did enjoy using the writing prompt found here. I am very much looking forward to the prompt posted up next Monday. Personally, the thing I found most fascinating about writing it was how, instinctively, I came back to the things which I have always been fascinated by, namely time and the power of memory to haunt us. I wish i could comment on Na's entry too, but alas my commenting facilities are still down. I really must get it sorted out. I am sure it is something quite simple. I wish also that I could work out how to put the accent above the a in her name. I wish I would also stop going off on tangents.
3: A dream last night where I couldn't quite work out whether or not I was living back in Worcestershire. Walking with Andy through slushy landscapes. The courtyard of a farm. Pointing out to Andy the strange rural-industrial signs on top of a barn, advertising obscure farming machinery.
4: Strange white January days. Not anything really. Both bleak and clean. No weather. The days are getting slightly shorter though, but when I wake in the mornings it is still dark.
5: A week in which I have been haunted by the song 'Late November' by Sandy Denny. I bought the album last Saturday after reading s short article about her in that mornings paper. An utterly creepy song, made even more so by the fact that I can't quite work out just why its so strangely eerie.
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