You’ve left it a bit late mate

 Posted by at 4:04 pm  Atelier, Fundamental Perversions  Comments Off
Aug 172013
 

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“At first I was surprised by her designs, her hopes for me, as though a seamstress should dream her son would be a bank teller not a banker, a druggist, not a dancer. Her aim was too low to have been aimed at, and there seemed little connection between her life and the life she sought for me.”*

Parents and off-spring; what the one has in mind – if anything – and the other has to discern through the darkness, the tragic mists and deceptions of language, the ambiguity of our dreams. A blank canvas, do what you like as long as you are happy. Yet the hope must be there, hidden under the fear of saying the wrong thing. Do I dare aim if the target is too indistinct, smudged by the clouds of fear. But not just the aim: one also has to gather the raw materials to oneself; to prepare for the attack on the world, to make an impression, a dent, a glorious explosion of day-glo colour.

You’ve left it a bit late mate!

Yeah I know, but you know how it is. I thought the world needed a bit of adjusting before I made my moves and besides the luxury of procrastination was always nearby. Why do today what you can put off till tomorrow.

I can almost see the edges, the shadowy episodes, those things that happen outside the official boundaries – not far outside, as I said, on the edges but where things are a bit blurry, Ill defined, or not defined at all, which is precisely the point: what is interesting is precisely what hasn’t been noticed, not put into language, not spelled out, mostly non-verbal, still inside the dream.

Surely the wheelbarrow with its load should have been heavier, but I was able to push it with surprising ease. I’m not, in the ordinary way of things, a strong, muscular creature; never laboured in the fields, nor on building sites, nor, for that matter, in a factory. What sort of privilege was that?

There was no doubt in my mind as to where to go, the route was predestined: some Calvinist trap primed for unwary souls, a sort of gravity for the spirit leading water ever downwards – river, lake, sea.

Am I supposed to take you seriously ? Is that you laughing or is it another thunderstorm building, another extreme weather event? Tragedy and comedy marching in lockstep. Can I keep my facial expressions up to speed. It’s hard when exhaustion slams in and the death mask fixes.

Ho hum, he joshes.

 

* The Tunnel p. 138

‘Their father’s world is too strange’

 Posted by at 10:54 am  Hitting the Potholes  Comments Off
Aug 162013
 

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The title is a phrase from The Tunnel and it provokes the question: What happens when the link cannot be made? I went to visit my cousin last week – he is about the same age as me, a couple of months older to be exact – but he is now suffering from vascular dementia and needs 24 hour care. His partner is looking after him; I think, heroically: I don’t know how long she will be able to maintain it. She explains the world to him so that he can manage it. And I lift up his hand to shake it or maybe simply to hold it in a way which I hope is reassuring. Later she takes him to the toilet and then goes out to take the car out of the garage in preparation for a doctor’s appointment and asks me to help him after he has washed his hands. He stands with dripping hands not knowing what to do. I hand him the towel and then he dries them.

On the way back into London I drop into Westminster Cathedral and light a candle and sit in the Lady chapel. Upset and maybe bewildered is the right word. Later I notice that I can almost envy his having her explain the world to him.

Stepping into the dream

 Posted by at 10:41 am  Hitting the Potholes  Comments Off
Aug 012013
 

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In the last few days I have made a (perhaps foolhardy) start on William H. Gass’s The Tunnel. I’m reminded of starting out on the Everest of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest: this is going to dominate for a while, quite a while. Anyway, the point of this is some words I have just read on page 85: ‘Memory. Mine is fragile . . . fragile . . . only paper; my sanity film thin.’ Yes, I say, I know what you’re talking about. And this is in the context of his protagonist reflecting on a dream he has had. That makes sense to me because some mornings it seems that the dreams have taken over or at least their potential of taking over appears dangerously close. Mr Ego, the day manager, has the ambition of everlasting power but is, even now, trembling on the edge: he should be and he is feeling dizzy, he is being given notice: don’t think that you have some sort of permanent contract. The grinning skull mask of our favourite Chancellor hovers in the mist before him. He suddenly realises that he too is like the rest of his staff. We are all on one of those whizzy little zero hours contracts. Yes the dreams will take over.

 

And while we are on the subject of dreams, quite suddenly I have a concern about what the long term effects are of all the advertising that we have been subjected to over the past sixty years. Particularly TV advertising. Bamboozled into drugs and slavery!

 

Dear Dr Bomboka, I want to make a request, to ask for your advice . . . You see, although this is a problem that I do my best to ignore, and some of the time Iactually succeed, sorry . . . to get to the point, what can one do about feebleness? No matter what I do I remain essentially feeble. It might be part of the human condition. I might have left it too late. But is there a pill, a spell, an incantation, a ritual, is there a prayer. Please help. Don’t delay in your answer. Yours in faith, a sufferer.