Tue - October 4, 2005
Where does it begin
Where's the beginning?
Maybe at one end, the furthest end, where it all seems to start. That end at which I grab my mother's hand as we come out of the house through the rather unkempt front garden with that plant of big shiny leaves of dark green with lighter spots, some of which at some point I had eaten and being very ill as as result. Maybe it could start by me not being quite awake, being carried by my dad to my room, half an eye open under the stars, the smell of tobacco and whiskey from my dad, the distant shiny lights of the 23 de Enero tower blocks on the horizon.
Maybe it starts before I start but then it is difficult to define a point where it all begins. Maybe in the textured black and white photographs of my mum's and my dad's wedding, he looking very stern, she looking... something like frightened. Or is it just hindsight that makes me see that. She was frightened alright, she didn't understand the world, something I can relate to as I am so much like that -I've made myself be able to cope but she never learnt. My memories of her are the chronicle of her slow disintegration, the gradual dissolution of her will and whatever it is that keeps us together and fighting and being ourselves, the slow giving up and surrendering to chaos and entropy.
Maybe the beginning lies elsewhere, in a field in a mountain in Italy, or another, different field in a páramo in the Venezuelan Andes. maybe that one that appeared before our eyes like a vision of a dream, when we turned a bend on the road on the way to La Grita sometime in 1983. Or perhaps much further back, in endless numerous stories of suffering and toiling and dying over many hundreds of years, the stories of many forgotten people who came before me and whose genetic material I carry, but in whom I probably would have difficulty recognising that which I am, whatever it is, other than the toiling and the suffering and the hoping for a better life... perhaps, many times before me, the hope in an afterworld that was better than this one devoid of sense and justice.
I am told many on my maternal family's side out there in the mountains had not worn or possessed proper shoes until very recent times. I met some uncles that were rather on the bumpkin side. Stolid, conservative, Christian, a very small view of a very small world. All the things that I have worked so hard to get rid of in myself. And yet there is something of value in there. I live nagged by doubt. You do not live in doubt when you have a solid foundation of religion and hard work.
There were the spotted green leaves. Also the fish bone -that is probably an earlier memory, as I recall being sat on the kitchen table (which was huge, huge) and holding a chipped enormous cenameled mug and being made to drink sips of water and being patted on my back, choking with the sensation of something piercing through my throat. My mum with her deep red hair in plaits, the radio set on top of the General Electric fridge with a big handle and rounded edges, the wooden slat furniture, all those things that I cannot be entirely sure whether I really remember them or my knowing they existed brings them into those snapshot memories.
Then I'm in a dark room. I could be in a cot, or a small bed; there are two other cots in the room, it is fresh and dark and quiet. Outside my mum walks past, with a broom in hand and a long suffering expression.
There is that old sepia photograph in which she is young, has a flower in her hair and is sitting in front of a house in the paramo playing an instrument that looks halfway between a cuatro and a large mandolin. She seems to be singing, she has a happy expression which I seldom, very seldom saw on her face in real life. She had said she'd had a daily radio programme, singing and playing and bringing other people to do that, in a radio station in a city, Cumarebo, where she lived for a while when her family were in their exodus from the Andes towards Caracas. I cannot really imagine that painfully shy woman hosting a live radio programme, but you never know.
I woke up to some counting aloud and grunting on the terrace rood patio. I didn't need to look, I knew it was my mum doing her exercises. She would bend over a hundred times, do other things of that sort, and yet her 'weight' inexorably increased (this is a euphemism, why do we say weight when it is not the weight that concerns us, really, but the volume?). At some point she gave up on that struggle. At around the same time she started to let herself go in other ways, stopped looking after herself, stopped going out, stopped, alas, playing the guitar and singing which was her passion and the justification for her life, one of the few genuine pleasures she had.
Her red hair, arranged with a sort of wave and a roll on the top of her forehead in a style that had been in fashion thirty years before, in a different world that was just about to be shaken by the second world war. She was getting seriously fat and we, her children, were so horrible to her. I now feel so sorry for her, trapped between an inconsiderate heavy drinking loud Italian husband and two untamed savage beastly children. With no way out. Maybe she didn't have a choice other than that slow suicide over ten years, if that is what it was. The escape exit lay through madness and death, there was no other escape conceivable.
We were truly horrible children in a very understated way. Many of the things we said and did are too embarrassing to mention and I would much rather forget. We had no idea about manners or consideration to others.. it is a miracle that we turned ok after all. I don't think it was our parents' fault either. They were, for different reasons, very ill equipped to bring us up and if there was a parenthood certificate they'd never have approved the exams. But it was not their fault. They were victims of their circumstance, and so were we. So much futile, meaningless, unnecessary suffering. And of course you could say there is so much worse in the world and it is true, but this somehow does not make it better, only more poignant nad meaningless.
- to be continued.
Maybe at one end, the furthest end, where it all seems to start. That end at which I grab my mother's hand as we come out of the house through the rather unkempt front garden with that plant of big shiny leaves of dark green with lighter spots, some of which at some point I had eaten and being very ill as as result. Maybe it could start by me not being quite awake, being carried by my dad to my room, half an eye open under the stars, the smell of tobacco and whiskey from my dad, the distant shiny lights of the 23 de Enero tower blocks on the horizon.
Maybe it starts before I start but then it is difficult to define a point where it all begins. Maybe in the textured black and white photographs of my mum's and my dad's wedding, he looking very stern, she looking... something like frightened. Or is it just hindsight that makes me see that. She was frightened alright, she didn't understand the world, something I can relate to as I am so much like that -I've made myself be able to cope but she never learnt. My memories of her are the chronicle of her slow disintegration, the gradual dissolution of her will and whatever it is that keeps us together and fighting and being ourselves, the slow giving up and surrendering to chaos and entropy.
Maybe the beginning lies elsewhere, in a field in a mountain in Italy, or another, different field in a páramo in the Venezuelan Andes. maybe that one that appeared before our eyes like a vision of a dream, when we turned a bend on the road on the way to La Grita sometime in 1983. Or perhaps much further back, in endless numerous stories of suffering and toiling and dying over many hundreds of years, the stories of many forgotten people who came before me and whose genetic material I carry, but in whom I probably would have difficulty recognising that which I am, whatever it is, other than the toiling and the suffering and the hoping for a better life... perhaps, many times before me, the hope in an afterworld that was better than this one devoid of sense and justice.
I am told many on my maternal family's side out there in the mountains had not worn or possessed proper shoes until very recent times. I met some uncles that were rather on the bumpkin side. Stolid, conservative, Christian, a very small view of a very small world. All the things that I have worked so hard to get rid of in myself. And yet there is something of value in there. I live nagged by doubt. You do not live in doubt when you have a solid foundation of religion and hard work.
There were the spotted green leaves. Also the fish bone -that is probably an earlier memory, as I recall being sat on the kitchen table (which was huge, huge) and holding a chipped enormous cenameled mug and being made to drink sips of water and being patted on my back, choking with the sensation of something piercing through my throat. My mum with her deep red hair in plaits, the radio set on top of the General Electric fridge with a big handle and rounded edges, the wooden slat furniture, all those things that I cannot be entirely sure whether I really remember them or my knowing they existed brings them into those snapshot memories.
Then I'm in a dark room. I could be in a cot, or a small bed; there are two other cots in the room, it is fresh and dark and quiet. Outside my mum walks past, with a broom in hand and a long suffering expression.
There is that old sepia photograph in which she is young, has a flower in her hair and is sitting in front of a house in the paramo playing an instrument that looks halfway between a cuatro and a large mandolin. She seems to be singing, she has a happy expression which I seldom, very seldom saw on her face in real life. She had said she'd had a daily radio programme, singing and playing and bringing other people to do that, in a radio station in a city, Cumarebo, where she lived for a while when her family were in their exodus from the Andes towards Caracas. I cannot really imagine that painfully shy woman hosting a live radio programme, but you never know.
I woke up to some counting aloud and grunting on the terrace rood patio. I didn't need to look, I knew it was my mum doing her exercises. She would bend over a hundred times, do other things of that sort, and yet her 'weight' inexorably increased (this is a euphemism, why do we say weight when it is not the weight that concerns us, really, but the volume?). At some point she gave up on that struggle. At around the same time she started to let herself go in other ways, stopped looking after herself, stopped going out, stopped, alas, playing the guitar and singing which was her passion and the justification for her life, one of the few genuine pleasures she had.
Her red hair, arranged with a sort of wave and a roll on the top of her forehead in a style that had been in fashion thirty years before, in a different world that was just about to be shaken by the second world war. She was getting seriously fat and we, her children, were so horrible to her. I now feel so sorry for her, trapped between an inconsiderate heavy drinking loud Italian husband and two untamed savage beastly children. With no way out. Maybe she didn't have a choice other than that slow suicide over ten years, if that is what it was. The escape exit lay through madness and death, there was no other escape conceivable.
We were truly horrible children in a very understated way. Many of the things we said and did are too embarrassing to mention and I would much rather forget. We had no idea about manners or consideration to others.. it is a miracle that we turned ok after all. I don't think it was our parents' fault either. They were, for different reasons, very ill equipped to bring us up and if there was a parenthood certificate they'd never have approved the exams. But it was not their fault. They were victims of their circumstance, and so were we. So much futile, meaningless, unnecessary suffering. And of course you could say there is so much worse in the world and it is true, but this somehow does not make it better, only more poignant nad meaningless.
- to be continued.
Posted at 11:26 PM
Sun - October 2, 2005
Atonement
atonement 2.5 voice.aif
Atonement is a little study built around one sound (supposedly the first million years of the Universe, somewhat abridged) and me reciting a few lines from 'The Book of Urizen' by Blake.
Atonement is a little study built around one sound (supposedly the first million years of the Universe, somewhat abridged) and me reciting a few lines from 'The Book of Urizen' by Blake.
Posted at 07:37 PM
Fri - September 16, 2005
La vida absurda
Life flows and ebbs and traps us in little spaces
where nothing happens until it does, or blows us away or apart with the flood.
Most of the time it is just the routine that gets that tiny little bit heavier
everyday, it is that wee bit more difficult to get out of bed, to face the
mirror, rinse the blooded toothbrush, pick up the razor and scrape across that
face of a stranger in the mirror, drag myself upstairs with a cup of coffee
trying not to think in the absurdity of it all, of these arrangements and
rearrangements of atoms and energies that constitute us, that surround us, that
eat away at us from all corners and off which we too unwillingly feed in this
universe made wrong, based on conflict and clash and death at all levels, from
the tiniest particle to the unimaginable clusters of galaxies, with us in the
middle of the scale -or so we'd like to think, vain that we are, now that we are
no longer at the centre of the universe and god didn't make us at his image and
semblance....
I hear the news while struggle with the tie knot, the news sent to us to reassure us in schadenfreude that there is death and destruction, ,there is untold suffering, there are calamities innumerable product of the workings of the uncaring universe or the wickedness of our fellow men, but they are all far away, we are here safe in England... finish my coffee, switch the radio off, set out juggling with the rubbish that has to be put out today (it is too early, they have already threatened to prosecute me for putting the rubbish out too early but if I don't nobody will and the house will stink as it has done in the last couple of days..)
The constituent materials of the universe have arranged themselves in the world outside in no less absurd a fashion... the cyclists jump on and off the pavement ignoring the pedestrians in their path and any pretence of civility, after all they too have god and right on their side, they are 'environmentally friendly' and therefore unencumbered by the laws and regulations that constrain cars and pedestrians. A neighbour walks by with his dog on a leash. I know what I'll find on the pavement a little further down the road, a less delicate arrangement of atoms... the parking attendants wait behind a corner,, at the ready to pounce. The man that was sitting outside the furniture store yesterday, drinking strong lager and addressing the passers by, is still there, asleep on the pavement, an overturned can of Super-Strong and a small puddle next to him. One of the local shopkeepers greets me as I walk past, looks at the new Tesco supermarket across the road and sighs at the sight of the possible end of his livelihood...
I hear the news while struggle with the tie knot, the news sent to us to reassure us in schadenfreude that there is death and destruction, ,there is untold suffering, there are calamities innumerable product of the workings of the uncaring universe or the wickedness of our fellow men, but they are all far away, we are here safe in England... finish my coffee, switch the radio off, set out juggling with the rubbish that has to be put out today (it is too early, they have already threatened to prosecute me for putting the rubbish out too early but if I don't nobody will and the house will stink as it has done in the last couple of days..)
The constituent materials of the universe have arranged themselves in the world outside in no less absurd a fashion... the cyclists jump on and off the pavement ignoring the pedestrians in their path and any pretence of civility, after all they too have god and right on their side, they are 'environmentally friendly' and therefore unencumbered by the laws and regulations that constrain cars and pedestrians. A neighbour walks by with his dog on a leash. I know what I'll find on the pavement a little further down the road, a less delicate arrangement of atoms... the parking attendants wait behind a corner,, at the ready to pounce. The man that was sitting outside the furniture store yesterday, drinking strong lager and addressing the passers by, is still there, asleep on the pavement, an overturned can of Super-Strong and a small puddle next to him. One of the local shopkeepers greets me as I walk past, looks at the new Tesco supermarket across the road and sighs at the sight of the possible end of his livelihood...
Posted at 10:21 AM
Wed - September 7, 2005
Streams
Two small attempts at sort of
hammer-and-saucepans music (I'm not going to call it industrial, it isn't). The
second one with some voices. Thinking of changing the harmonies on this and
reciting-chanting on top of it. This is Streams
2:
and this is Streams 2.1
It all needs a whole lot work...
and this is Streams 2.1
It all needs a whole lot work...
Posted at 03:52 PM
Sat - August 20, 2005
The Mist
Electric and acoustic guitars, samples, police car. Sort of ambient-bluesy. To call it something.
Posted at 10:02 AM
Atonement
This is an electronic doodle. The noise in the beginning is the sound of the first million years of the Universe ... allegedly, accelerated a little and transposed a few octaves. Or so it goes. The voice in the background is just me, reciting something from 'The Book of Urizen' (Maybe I should stop hanging out with goths:D).
Posted at 10:00 AM
Wed - August 17, 2005
Dreams of Catia, again
The streets were familiar but , all the same, I
didn't know exactly where I was. It must have been Catia but not my old
neighbourhood, rather the bits of La Cortada or Gramoven or Pro-Patria where we
weren't allowed to go as children, because they were 'dangerous' (i now believe
this really meant 'lower class than us' or something of this
sort).
There were several parts to this dream; in the first I seemed to be wandering in Casalta, making my way back from somewhere. I saw Bill Clinton being led into a house, a very small crowd of onlookers outside at a certain distance, mostly children, commenting -they didn't seem to be aware of who he was, only the fact that he looked foreign and 'gringo' and, perhaps, important, with an entourage of body-guards and people in suits. I went into the house unchallenged and spoke to him, while his minders seemed to get restless and I was thinking of that poor Brazilian guy shot by the police in the London Underground..
After a short while I left and wandered towards Calle Colombia, skirting around the block where Jose's 'Pre-Universitarian Institute' was,and around the Shopping Centre which seemed somehow to be undone,or perhaps not yet built, but somehow never got there. I got lost and couldn't figure out where I was; it was an even poorer neighbourhood and I was confronted by a group of young men, who asked me where I was going. I told them I was on my way back from a gig and looking for a friend in that neighbourhood and needed to retrieve my violin from him (and thinking at the same time that it was a very, very stupid lie -I can't play violin for toffee and could very easily be found out -these guys wouldn't take kindly to having the mickey taken off them). They pointed me in the direction of a house on the steep street ahead, a house that seem to be built like a staircase, in different levels that ended up at each end on the street above and below.
This is where I met her. She opened the door and let me in, seemed to recognise me even though I was sure I'd never seen her before -she thought I was a friend of her brother's. She gave me food and we talked for a very long time. I liked her, I liked her a lot but I knew she was out of my reach. With a pang in the heart I explained to her that I needed to move on. I asked her again where I was. I was not in Pro Patria as I sort of imagined: she showed me a map in which I recognised nothing of the Catia I had lived in for so many years. She pointed at the extreme left of the map, near the sea. That's where we were. I had no idea, I don't think there were buildings anywhere as near the coast when I lived there. And this was many miles upon miles of dangerous slums away. How do I get to where I need to be, then? She pointed at a place that seemed to be in the middle of the map. This is where you want to go. There is no easy way at this time of night for you to get there. How about a taxi, I said. A taxi? Here? was the answer. My urge to leave was growing in the same proportion as the attraction for this woman with a soft voice and almond eyes. I needed to get out of here....
She went to get something and ask her brother how I could possibly leave the neighbourhood. That gave me the opportunity. I calmly grabbed my things while she was in there in those rooms, put my shoes on (why had i been bare-footed in a stranger's house?) and shouted a thanks and good-bye as I went out and closed the door behind me. There were two taxis outside, with fiery letters on the side and illuminated signs on top. But I hesitated, as I didn't know whether I had enough money, and they both left. There I stood, in the middle of this place, without any clue of how to get out and knowing full well that it was an extremely dangerous place, for anyone, but in particular for someone with long hair dressed in a foreign fashion. The street was empty. I started to walk on the high pavement, not knowing where I was or where I was going.....
There were several parts to this dream; in the first I seemed to be wandering in Casalta, making my way back from somewhere. I saw Bill Clinton being led into a house, a very small crowd of onlookers outside at a certain distance, mostly children, commenting -they didn't seem to be aware of who he was, only the fact that he looked foreign and 'gringo' and, perhaps, important, with an entourage of body-guards and people in suits. I went into the house unchallenged and spoke to him, while his minders seemed to get restless and I was thinking of that poor Brazilian guy shot by the police in the London Underground..
After a short while I left and wandered towards Calle Colombia, skirting around the block where Jose's 'Pre-Universitarian Institute' was,and around the Shopping Centre which seemed somehow to be undone,or perhaps not yet built, but somehow never got there. I got lost and couldn't figure out where I was; it was an even poorer neighbourhood and I was confronted by a group of young men, who asked me where I was going. I told them I was on my way back from a gig and looking for a friend in that neighbourhood and needed to retrieve my violin from him (and thinking at the same time that it was a very, very stupid lie -I can't play violin for toffee and could very easily be found out -these guys wouldn't take kindly to having the mickey taken off them). They pointed me in the direction of a house on the steep street ahead, a house that seem to be built like a staircase, in different levels that ended up at each end on the street above and below.
This is where I met her. She opened the door and let me in, seemed to recognise me even though I was sure I'd never seen her before -she thought I was a friend of her brother's. She gave me food and we talked for a very long time. I liked her, I liked her a lot but I knew she was out of my reach. With a pang in the heart I explained to her that I needed to move on. I asked her again where I was. I was not in Pro Patria as I sort of imagined: she showed me a map in which I recognised nothing of the Catia I had lived in for so many years. She pointed at the extreme left of the map, near the sea. That's where we were. I had no idea, I don't think there were buildings anywhere as near the coast when I lived there. And this was many miles upon miles of dangerous slums away. How do I get to where I need to be, then? She pointed at a place that seemed to be in the middle of the map. This is where you want to go. There is no easy way at this time of night for you to get there. How about a taxi, I said. A taxi? Here? was the answer. My urge to leave was growing in the same proportion as the attraction for this woman with a soft voice and almond eyes. I needed to get out of here....
She went to get something and ask her brother how I could possibly leave the neighbourhood. That gave me the opportunity. I calmly grabbed my things while she was in there in those rooms, put my shoes on (why had i been bare-footed in a stranger's house?) and shouted a thanks and good-bye as I went out and closed the door behind me. There were two taxis outside, with fiery letters on the side and illuminated signs on top. But I hesitated, as I didn't know whether I had enough money, and they both left. There I stood, in the middle of this place, without any clue of how to get out and knowing full well that it was an extremely dangerous place, for anyone, but in particular for someone with long hair dressed in a foreign fashion. The street was empty. I started to walk on the high pavement, not knowing where I was or where I was going.....
Posted at 10:57 AM
Mon - July 25, 2005
in our brief time
What are we doing with the brief time we
have?
We don't know what it is about, we begin to have a hope of understanding how the physical world that contains us -and of which we are a part- works, but still no closer to understanding why...
Some of us think they have found the key to it all. It all rests in a Creator figure who has been revealed to them, who has told them what to believe and what is right and what is wrong. All in very simple terms, in black and white, this is good and this is bad and all you who do not share this belief are evil and not really human. This is a very useful way of making sense of the world, it makes analysis, doubt and self-doubt redundant. God created the earth, there's good and evil very clearly labelled and easily identifiable and we only have to have Faith.
And so, we simply close our eyes to the questions we cannot answer. We refuse to see the bottomless infinity before us and to shut it out hang a sheet with nice and clear Heavens on top with our reward awaiting, and Hell at the bottom with the punishment for the evil ones, the number of which of course does not include us....
We don't know what it is about, we begin to have a hope of understanding how the physical world that contains us -and of which we are a part- works, but still no closer to understanding why...
Some of us think they have found the key to it all. It all rests in a Creator figure who has been revealed to them, who has told them what to believe and what is right and what is wrong. All in very simple terms, in black and white, this is good and this is bad and all you who do not share this belief are evil and not really human. This is a very useful way of making sense of the world, it makes analysis, doubt and self-doubt redundant. God created the earth, there's good and evil very clearly labelled and easily identifiable and we only have to have Faith.
And so, we simply close our eyes to the questions we cannot answer. We refuse to see the bottomless infinity before us and to shut it out hang a sheet with nice and clear Heavens on top with our reward awaiting, and Hell at the bottom with the punishment for the evil ones, the number of which of course does not include us....
Posted at 11:22 AM
Tue - July 5, 2005
in boxes
Keep all the little
boxes
well within your heart
and, along with them
all the fears, like so many little deaths
Write a letter to someone
who might become a ghost
-who will become a ghost
fight that fear, you gotta fight that fear
but time passes,
washing away dreams
and loves
and leaving only dust and boredom
in return
Keep all the little boxes
hidden
well within your heart
flavio 1986
well within your heart
and, along with them
all the fears, like so many little deaths
Write a letter to someone
who might become a ghost
-who will become a ghost
fight that fear, you gotta fight that fear
but time passes,
washing away dreams
and loves
and leaving only dust and boredom
in return
Keep all the little boxes
hidden
well within your heart
flavio 1986
Posted at 08:53 AM
Thu - June 30, 2005
entropy
(sometime in 2004, in a particularly bleak day in
a shared house)
OK, perhaps i exaggerate just a tiny little bit, but in the dust bunnies crawling up the stairs, the piles of empty bottles that only get disposed of when I do it, the rubbish overflowing in the kitchen bin until I take it out, the pile of washing up undone, the half-empty (yes, definitely half-empty not half-full) cups everywhere, the bills blissfully ignored, the stack of washing that got left wet under the chair in the kitchen for days until it stank . .I feel in all of this and in the happy blind irresponsibility and lack of consideration that generate those things, the call of the void, the cold finger of the final disordering and heat death of the universe....
OK, perhaps i exaggerate just a tiny little bit, but in the dust bunnies crawling up the stairs, the piles of empty bottles that only get disposed of when I do it, the rubbish overflowing in the kitchen bin until I take it out, the pile of washing up undone, the half-empty (yes, definitely half-empty not half-full) cups everywhere, the bills blissfully ignored, the stack of washing that got left wet under the chair in the kitchen for days until it stank . .I feel in all of this and in the happy blind irresponsibility and lack of consideration that generate those things, the call of the void, the cold finger of the final disordering and heat death of the universe....
Posted at 06:56 PM
Sun - June 5, 2005
the surf
What is it we are, I used to ask myself, sitting
on the sand, hearing the white noise of the waves, the crunching steps, the
shouts in the distance melting in the mushy white noise. The uncomfortable
feeling of the sand in between your toes, under your swimming trunks, the being
alone there wondering what I was and what I was doing in the world, while
screaming families playing beach volleyball, a couple laid out a picnic nearby,
the girl of my dreams (what dreams you could have at that age of a girl older
than you) walked by in the mid distance, her long brown hair thrown around in
the wind -and then she would squawk, shout in a shrill penetrating voice to her
boyfriend and add to the crunchy aural background, as well as to the general
feeling that life was slightly pointless -as well as too short. All the answers
to the questions that mattered were hidden from us. And all the girls that I
could possibly like would forever love me as a friend and tell me their exploits
with boys and ask me for advice. I could clearly see that future laid in front
of me then, so early, and I knew it would be true and rued it even
then.
I could see my mum, who couldn't swim, floating on an enormous black tyre tube, a rare moment of calm and absence of stress in her lonely crumbling life. My sister was playing with a bucket and spade, covered in wet sand, in her synthetic looking pink swimsuit. My dad wasn't in sight, he was away at the bar, playing dominoes with his chums, in the midst of many bottles of beer, shouting and slamming the pieces down, the hoarse laughter filling the room -how I hated that. There was something about those men and women that repelled me so thoroughly, that seemed intrinsically wrong and dirty about them and which felt menacing to a shy thirteen year old who was finding out he didn't believe in God and the essential justice of the universe, but who desperately needed answers and reassurances to cling on to, needed explanations for his dysfunctional family, his dysfunctional environment, city and country....
I used to fold up bits of card, cut out a bilaterally symmetric little human figure with a cape, draw its face and Superman costume and give it a name, a soul and a personality, as we do to our toys and perhaps to our pets who we think we know but with whom there is the chasm of the essential difference in how we process the world. I had a few with me nearly at all times but not that piercingly bright midday at the beach, alone on the sand while around me all went around the business of having fun on a day out. I dug in the sand with a stick, half-blinded by the sunlight, made myself small and invisible. My father walked past without looking at me, went in the water and swam in long arm movements far, far into the sea. Maybe he wouldn't return, maybe he'd disappear. What would we do? He wouldn't shout at us again, but also we wouldn't have money to buy food and things (I don't think I had, even then, a clear idea of the correspondence between work and money and the things we had). He was drunk, I knew; he should not be swimming so far out into the sea, far past the buoys.
Soon he would come out and shout and wave at us in his foreign Italian way, to gather our things and go to the car, that boiling box of metal with plastic upholstery that would burn the textured pattern, imprint onto our skin. He would shout at us a couple of times. We had no feelings, we did not understand him or care for him. Fuck you, I might as well drive off that cliff, I might well do that. Then my mum would implore, please Pascual don't do that. We would remain silent, my sister and I. Only now I realise that every week-end we went to the beach I was convinced we would not make it back, something dreadful like a stupid car accident would happen or our father would flip and really drive off the cliff. None of these things ever happened, but they loomed large in my mind and probably my sister's -although I have come to learn that she has very different memories of those days of which my own seem to be so glum, for me a tale of quiet despair and of the universe going wrong under the blue, blue Caribbean sky...
I could see my mum, who couldn't swim, floating on an enormous black tyre tube, a rare moment of calm and absence of stress in her lonely crumbling life. My sister was playing with a bucket and spade, covered in wet sand, in her synthetic looking pink swimsuit. My dad wasn't in sight, he was away at the bar, playing dominoes with his chums, in the midst of many bottles of beer, shouting and slamming the pieces down, the hoarse laughter filling the room -how I hated that. There was something about those men and women that repelled me so thoroughly, that seemed intrinsically wrong and dirty about them and which felt menacing to a shy thirteen year old who was finding out he didn't believe in God and the essential justice of the universe, but who desperately needed answers and reassurances to cling on to, needed explanations for his dysfunctional family, his dysfunctional environment, city and country....
I used to fold up bits of card, cut out a bilaterally symmetric little human figure with a cape, draw its face and Superman costume and give it a name, a soul and a personality, as we do to our toys and perhaps to our pets who we think we know but with whom there is the chasm of the essential difference in how we process the world. I had a few with me nearly at all times but not that piercingly bright midday at the beach, alone on the sand while around me all went around the business of having fun on a day out. I dug in the sand with a stick, half-blinded by the sunlight, made myself small and invisible. My father walked past without looking at me, went in the water and swam in long arm movements far, far into the sea. Maybe he wouldn't return, maybe he'd disappear. What would we do? He wouldn't shout at us again, but also we wouldn't have money to buy food and things (I don't think I had, even then, a clear idea of the correspondence between work and money and the things we had). He was drunk, I knew; he should not be swimming so far out into the sea, far past the buoys.
Soon he would come out and shout and wave at us in his foreign Italian way, to gather our things and go to the car, that boiling box of metal with plastic upholstery that would burn the textured pattern, imprint onto our skin. He would shout at us a couple of times. We had no feelings, we did not understand him or care for him. Fuck you, I might as well drive off that cliff, I might well do that. Then my mum would implore, please Pascual don't do that. We would remain silent, my sister and I. Only now I realise that every week-end we went to the beach I was convinced we would not make it back, something dreadful like a stupid car accident would happen or our father would flip and really drive off the cliff. None of these things ever happened, but they loomed large in my mind and probably my sister's -although I have come to learn that she has very different memories of those days of which my own seem to be so glum, for me a tale of quiet despair and of the universe going wrong under the blue, blue Caribbean sky...
Posted at 11:44 AM
Tue - May 10, 2005
Revolutions
Pupil doesn't turn up and I sit alone in this
cold room one more time. Two classrooms away a bunch of kids rehearse for the
school music competition.. the Beatles' 'Revolution'. It is so strange to hear
that echo, that ripple from a past world, belted out in anger by these
teen-agers, as I would have done, all those years
ago.
I still haven't arrived,after all this time, to a firm conclusion about the lyrics of that angry song, but it now seems more than a little reactionary to me..
Past and future flakes peel off in the kaleidoscope of the things that were, the things that could have and weren't, those that were, things as we perceived them at their time, as we remember them....
'awright', scream the boys, wacking the drum kit... "you know it's gonna be....awright "
Maybe.
but it is difficult to believe.
I still haven't arrived,after all this time, to a firm conclusion about the lyrics of that angry song, but it now seems more than a little reactionary to me..
Past and future flakes peel off in the kaleidoscope of the things that were, the things that could have and weren't, those that were, things as we perceived them at their time, as we remember them....
'awright', scream the boys, wacking the drum kit... "you know it's gonna be....awright "
Maybe.
but it is difficult to believe.
Posted at 10:00 AM
Mon - May 9, 2005
the slow, inexorable rise of kipple
Reading more Philip K Dick now, which I like not
because he's a great writer in the sense Borges is (his plots are often full of
holes, his construction is often not 'beautiful', consistent or balanced) and
even not so much because of the science-fiction side of it -he is not very
good at gadgets and future prediction, but what he is good at is exploring the
nature of that which we call reality, or rather our perception of it from our
grubby lives made of toil and routines and small frustrations and even smaller
triumphs with only ever occasional epiphanies or moments of blinding
bright revelation.... all in the brief, brief space in which we are, between the
eternal nothingness of not having been -which, for being in the past,
doesn't seem so terrifying as the one yet to come to us, but both infinite and,
if you allow them,
overwhelming....
Perhaps I'm getting a bit heavy for the time of day. I'm rushing in between lessons, worrying about that grinding noise in the car, aware that a pupil is not entirely happy with his lessons, that I'm here and in spite of the shower I took a couple of hours ago I feel sweaty and dirty., life going past in a flash, grinning and teasing while I desperately try to get hold of her and grab its meaning.. for now, though, the terrifying void ahead is obscured by a mass of bills to pay, of a knee now hurting when I walk upstairs, of the little every day frustrations, the kipple's inexorable advance... the man jumping out of a dark street corner offering marihuana, the woman with the shaved head pushing a supermarket trolley full of rags and trying to sell you a dog-eared copy of The Big Issue, a man sitting with his guitar and his harmonica playing the blues on the doorstep of my local off-license. in the middle of the night... all the while, dirt and muck increasing, things breaking, relationships breaking, our cells slowly building up their own death, the world moving towards that state of lower energy of total disorder...
... but also of the laughter and tears of a friend who finds, in a birthday present, that true friends exist, even abound around her.
One hopes for the world to make sense. And for it to make sense in a way that includes us. But maybe that is too much to ask, too much to expect.. Maybe the universe just explores -or explodes, blindly in all directions and we just happen to be one of the directions possible....
Perhaps I'm getting a bit heavy for the time of day. I'm rushing in between lessons, worrying about that grinding noise in the car, aware that a pupil is not entirely happy with his lessons, that I'm here and in spite of the shower I took a couple of hours ago I feel sweaty and dirty., life going past in a flash, grinning and teasing while I desperately try to get hold of her and grab its meaning.. for now, though, the terrifying void ahead is obscured by a mass of bills to pay, of a knee now hurting when I walk upstairs, of the little every day frustrations, the kipple's inexorable advance... the man jumping out of a dark street corner offering marihuana, the woman with the shaved head pushing a supermarket trolley full of rags and trying to sell you a dog-eared copy of The Big Issue, a man sitting with his guitar and his harmonica playing the blues on the doorstep of my local off-license. in the middle of the night... all the while, dirt and muck increasing, things breaking, relationships breaking, our cells slowly building up their own death, the world moving towards that state of lower energy of total disorder...
... but also of the laughter and tears of a friend who finds, in a birthday present, that true friends exist, even abound around her.
One hopes for the world to make sense. And for it to make sense in a way that includes us. But maybe that is too much to ask, too much to expect.. Maybe the universe just explores -or explodes, blindly in all directions and we just happen to be one of the directions possible....
Posted at 08:24 PM
Wed - May 4, 2005
in somnis
In my old house in Catia, there was some sort of
weird party which I couldn't quite figure out. Rather a ceremony than a party,
people were concerned. There were glasses of champagne and formal evening wear
in between the walls with crackled peeling paint of my old house. I can't
remember who proposed bringing the entity, whose name I didn't hear but I knew
well what it, or he, was about. Or perhaps didn't even know, but the foreboding
and the chill in my spine told me something reason wasn't quite getting. I
turned to Rosalexia, my companion, and said to her we better be near the front
door where we could escape.
Then the hearse arrived, with a sort of garish pink plastic box with what looked like fairy lights. But I knew it was the entity they had summoned that lay in there. There was a small hostile crowd gathering outside and someone threw a can of beer at me. We went the other way, to the grocers' at the top corner. it was busy there, with Mrs Gloria back behind the counter -how many years since I had seen her. I turned around and commented on this to Sam, my companion (I thought I was with Rosalexia just a while back). We bought some drinks and sweets, under the unfriendly gaze of the other customers and the Andino man that had the newstand outside.
We made our way to the house somehow.
sinopsis: sueño con casa de catia (que parece convertirse en avion u otro vehiculo a medio camino) reunion donde invitan o traen una entidad que va a resolver un misterio grave de alguna clase, yo no estoy contento con ello porque presiento un peligro muy grande. Me muevo hacia la puerta de la casa, para poder escapar. veo la llegada de una carroza funebre que porta una especie de caja de plastico rosa con luces, muy garish; se que la entidad, sea lo que sea, esta ahi. Hay un heckler o dos que nos tiran latas de cerveza, una me pega. Voy con Sam donde la señora gloria, hay una multitud preocupada, compramos algo, vagabundeamos por la calle (gobernacion? no, como se llamaba) pero terminamos escondidos en la casa. La entidad es peligrosa y nos busca. La casa es ahora un avion, un vehiculo de alguna clase. Escapar.
Era la casa vieja de Catia, habia una especie de fiesta...
Then the hearse arrived, with a sort of garish pink plastic box with what looked like fairy lights. But I knew it was the entity they had summoned that lay in there. There was a small hostile crowd gathering outside and someone threw a can of beer at me. We went the other way, to the grocers' at the top corner. it was busy there, with Mrs Gloria back behind the counter -how many years since I had seen her. I turned around and commented on this to Sam, my companion (I thought I was with Rosalexia just a while back). We bought some drinks and sweets, under the unfriendly gaze of the other customers and the Andino man that had the newstand outside.
We made our way to the house somehow.
sinopsis: sueño con casa de catia (que parece convertirse en avion u otro vehiculo a medio camino) reunion donde invitan o traen una entidad que va a resolver un misterio grave de alguna clase, yo no estoy contento con ello porque presiento un peligro muy grande. Me muevo hacia la puerta de la casa, para poder escapar. veo la llegada de una carroza funebre que porta una especie de caja de plastico rosa con luces, muy garish; se que la entidad, sea lo que sea, esta ahi. Hay un heckler o dos que nos tiran latas de cerveza, una me pega. Voy con Sam donde la señora gloria, hay una multitud preocupada, compramos algo, vagabundeamos por la calle (gobernacion? no, como se llamaba) pero terminamos escondidos en la casa. La entidad es peligrosa y nos busca. La casa es ahora un avion, un vehiculo de alguna clase. Escapar.
Era la casa vieja de Catia, habia una especie de fiesta...
Posted at 10:42 AM
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Published On: Oct 05, 2005 12:01 AM
Published On: Oct 05, 2005 12:01 AM