Conversation with Prince George

That sword's gonna fall tomorrow?
Really? Nothing I can do?
No. Just the one sword though.
What's the damage?
Don't know. I know the sword is gonna fall though.
I don't want to know.
Too late now, you know. just try to enjoy tonight.
Knowing that sword's gonna fall?
Nothing else to do. It will fall. There will be damage.
Nothing else to say.

Remembrance of Things Past Again

I remember trying to read Swanns Way (the first part of Proust's Rememberance of Things Past) before. This was back over the autumn of 2008. I used to read it on those luxuriously long intervals between calls at the old call centre job. Or at least I think I did. I took it down to Cornwall with me to in November of that year, read it to a soundtrack of Darkthrone's Dark Thrones and Black Flags album which had just been released. At some point over that week, I decided there was no point in continuing it as I wasn't enjoying it all. I wonder what happened to that copy of it. It was a large cheaply printed copy, and I can't even remember where I bought it from... but I do know it was from a bookshop closed down. I'm reading it again now, obviously, and so far I am enjoying it, but it's a long book, and the shadow of that earlier failure hangs over me. I don't want another reading incident like last summer where Bolano's The Savage Detectives hung like a weight round my neck, an albatross that stretched all over summer, from the Jubilee till whenever. I was so sick of that book by the end, and really just wasn't paying any attention to it. It became like some endurance test rather than something to be enjoyed, and it was a fantastic book, but I just didn't have the attention span required for it then. I hope my focus has improved this year, Remembrance of Things Past is even longer...

Tarot Card Moon

I walk Em home about 1:00am, through the streets unfamiliar with their busyness; people leaving house parties, getting into cars, groups of one or two, noisily moving through the usually emptied streets, a solitary stumbler whose eyes are sharp as suspicion. Something predatory there.
When I get back home, I am still hungry. Make some cheese on toast, flick through the television. Go to bed about 2:30am.
Welcome to 2013.
I wake at 10:00am. Drag myself out of bed. A cup of tea and the living room. Flick through the television and start to read Proust's Remembrance of Things Past. After a while I become restless, do some drawing instead. Something I began early last summer. This already has a title, Our Lady of Bulletbelts and Laundry Days showing the figure of a woman against a background of a weedy embankment above which hangs a washing line. A strange saint for strange days. I can't help but think the moon that would shine for her would be a tarot card moon, and I can't help bit think this because the tarot card moon was mentioned in a song I have been listening to. Can't remember,-don't know the title, but it was on the Boyd Rice / Death in June album collaboration Alarm Agents. 
Em comes round about 1:00pm, mirroring the time she left twelve hours before. We go down the beach which is crowded with people, probably because of the bright blue skies and even brighter sun. Hundreds of people, all wrapped up in scarves and coats and new years cheer, a myriad of out of season holiday makers, -but they probably all live here. Long lines of people at the seafront coffee stalls mean no coffee (I have no patience to wait) so I watch the foamy exuberance of the sea instead.