#184

When you're falling apart the hardest thing to do is pull yourself together.

“You've got to get a grip of yourself,” said mother, after I rang her and then hung silent on the other end like some nuisance caller. Taking her words literally I gripped a hold of a huge clump of baggy skin on my forearm and watched as it stood in a ridge and remained there for too long before very slowly retaking colour and sinking back down.

“I'm getting old,” I said “I'm dying.”

“Oh well, we're all dying Dear, but we don't all look as bad as you with it. Really, how you can live as you do... all those bottles near the bed, it's beyond me. And you're not even a drunk! Well I don't know what you're going to do... I mean... ”

Mother went on. It seemed not to matter that I wasn't responding. She'd often pause, as if listening to a reply, and then start off again, saying the same thing over and over until I was miles away suddenly feeling very strange at the drastic change of light which had just darkened the room.


I fingered the curtain back sheepishly, half expecting to find Little Dick Tracy, his Goons and half the fucking world out there peering in. But it wasn't that. Outside the sky was so grey it was black. At first I thought it was another storm. But no, this storm was moving, breaking up, a thousand seperate entities occasionally letting shards of daylight through. Pigeons, hundreds of thousands of pigeons, flapping and swooping and swooning in, sitting perched everywhere like the most beautiful things ever. Where they come from or why they are here, who knows? Who knows anything? Natural phenomenon is so wildly stunning it's sad. Even if the sun never burns out we'll never understand it all.

5 comments:

  1. Get a grip... with the Absolut gripped tightly in my hand as if it were the last gas mask..in WW11 ... I cannot tell you to get a grip..
    Advice.. Get the fuck out of there whilst you still can.. Rio baby xx

    ReplyDelete
  2. As Ruby said: Get a Fucking Grip.

    Having said that...

    I think your writing is getting better and better.

    Sort of supreme.

    'Outside the sky was so grey it was black'.

    'Even if the sun never burns out we'll never understand it all'.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ruby: Oh god she's hitting the vodka... run!!! X

    Joe M: I've said to you before that my words in this time (building up over the 18 months) really have a lot to do with yourself. I can't explain that simply. But you came along and said the right things at the right time and then stayed around and kept seeing the same things in my writing as what I saw. Almost every line I write which I enjoy you also seem to zone in on. So much so that I now refer to them as "lines for Joe M" (which could be the nice title for a book).

    I'm not embarrassed to say it either.

    Knowing your eyes were reading over this stuff, and you knew what you was looking for, it made me much more conscientious about each sentence. Before, I knew I had a few decent phrases and I really used the rest of the piece as filler just to lead onto them. Now I take much more care about the stuff in between and have learnt that a great sentence can stand or fall by what comes before or after it.... that every word is important. One day I will explain properly all this, but for now, just know that if anything I write is 'supreme' 50% of that is always grace to you. X

    New post within the hour.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Well what Can I Say...

    I think Waiting For John and Memoirs of a Herion Head are just the ultimate.

    Every single sentence. I mean to draw in Babs - to invoke humour like that.

    As The Pet Shop Boys said:

    Absolutely Fabulous

    ReplyDelete
  5. OMG...is this cyber sex I'm reading in the comment section?

    ReplyDelete

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