Henry's Dream

Henry woke up with the slow realisation that he was on his bathroom floor in a pool of vomit. The weak light entering from the skylight above him indicated he had been in this situation for at least 4 hours, and soon he would have to wipe the clammy, boozy sweat from his brow and heave himself off the floor and onwards through another day at the office. These realities came back to him like the returning tide, carrying away the horrors his subconcious had knitted together in his dreams. One scene from such a dream was stubbornly vivid and unforgettable, a recurring sequence of images driving knives into his conscience. It begins with Henry walking through a cramped corridor, invoking a sense of fear and the desire to move forward with a desperation bordering on mania. This corridor eventually ends in a heavy wooden door, which opens onto a small, smoky room. At the front of this room is a small stage, and in the center, lit by a harsh spotlight, is Cheryl. She is alone, although Henry gets the sense that he’s just missed the party. He’s looking directly at Cheryl, but she’s not acknowledging him. She’s looking out into the dark corners with her usual bovine expression. upon closer inspection, he notices she’s wearing a lot of make-up, messily applied, creating a caricature of her blunt features, painting lips and eyes where her own assets fall short. She's wearing a glittering dress with a plunging neckline, from which shapeless massive tits strain against delicate fabric. A slit up one side reveals a massive thigh, flesh folding in on itself once before pinching together at the knee. She begins singing, in an embarrassed, wavering voice, a Dire Straights song which Henry often enjoyed whilst drunk in his Mercedes - but which he could not tolerate at any other time. Her small awkward voice rises to a shrill wail and a pained cry as her flesh tears apart from her massive, expanding weight. Excruciatingly slowly, each layer of viscera, fat and muscle exposes itself as her cries finally give way to gurgles. At this point Henry laughs and claps loudly, whooping with delight, pleased with the show.

"Big Dave's Gusset"

A message sprawling over a great warehouse wall
beside train tracks
I like to think this wall will stand forever
while the cool glass towers
and stone monuments to achievement
disintegrate to their bare elements
and people devolved
will dwell amongst this detritus
like rats in its cold crevices
in the shadow of this sturdy wall
with its scrawled message
"Big Dave's Gusset"
the last historical artifact
senseless and perverse
kept close to their dumb hearts.

BurnBurnBurn

From 'On the Road':

'The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.'
I'm not one of these people, but I wish I was.

The Final Misadventure of a Soho Pigeon

We spotted the pigeon on Friday from a toilet window that looks out over a few low rooftops, chimneys and air-conditioning units. This peculiar landscape, caught between various sheer walls of taller, greater buildings, is covered in that ubiquitous spiders' web of pigeon netting, which gives it an oddly sci-fi aspect, if you have an imagination so uninspired and anemic as mine. The pigeon had its wings pinned to its sides as it had tried to squirm through one square of the spiders' web, it had got halfway and could go no further in either direction. It's head nodded back and forth, its feathers looked patchy and greasy. It lay in a pool of its own blood. It made soft and persistent cooing noises while it's fellow gutter-birds looked on with dumb indifference. The futility of this birds final moments gave my friday afternoon a deranged feeling of poignancy.
It's lifeless tangled corpse was still there this morning. I could no longer discern a head or a tail, it's greasy filthy feathers sprang up in odd directions like it had been buffeted by high winds.

At least six dead as cars plunge into Mississippi

A great headline, from another world.

Start at the Beginning

This blog business is new to me. I've resisted the temptation to pitch one more clamouring ego into "cyberspace"(why does that phrase seem so dated and inappropriate?) for so long, but have lately become so tortured by the tedium of my job that requires me to sit facing this hateful machine on daily basis, that I have no better option than to inflict upon strangers the "grunts and squeeks" of my thoughts as they spill out my poor befuddled brain and down the gutters of blogs that have gone before, for your edification and delight no doubt. To introduce myself, I am a young girl living in London, as achieving nothing in London somehow seems more acceptable than achieving nothing in some small town. At least I've traveled to achieve nothing. Perhaps I just feel satisfied being in a position to observe greatness rather than be involved, thats right - my husband calls me a "non-participator". London is a great place for observing the greatness of others, it is also a great place for cultivating a misanthropic attitude. The one allows for the other, it's a state of equilibrium, clinging to those rare flashes of brilliance, the shock of recognition, witnessing an unselfish act but at the same time the constant shit-and-piss reality of gormless humanity staring you blankly in the face.

Hey Ho another day to toil away.