The wondrous warmth of that ruby red; I wouldn’t have thought of it as blood red, but somehow the idea comes to mind, some correlation between blood and red wine. But of course, then the connection flashes up – the Mass: the blood the wine, the wine is the blood.
I had to write the 13 of the year very slowly, with hesitant intention – what year is it? After the trauma, the catastrophe; after the dust has settled, some stability returned to the feel of the earth, then comes the pressing need to re-structure, re-formulate, re-build. Perhaps even some tenuous sense of identity grabbed and forced into use from the fragments lying scattered amongst the debris.
Probably it was merely a dream image, something snagged on a thorn, thought to thought. Why bother to read a book when you can watch a movie? Thomas Jones in the latest LRB is reviewing J Robert Lennon’s (I imagine he is a John Lennon but needed to not be confused with the John Lennon of Beatle’s fame) novel, Familiar. Jones quotes from a Lennon Tweet: ‘When I’m out walking alone and I encounter another man out walking alone I’m like what the hell’s that creep up to’. Familiar is a story that concerns what is and is not familiar, what happens when the familiar becomes unfamiliar. It sounds like sci-fi rather than literary novel. But I suppose that is part of what it is about. How do we fit the weirdness of our psychological world in with the quotidian hard rocks of how it is. To be a man out walking alone is to place oneself in dodgy territory. A man out walking alone is a poet and a prowler, already guilty of every unsolved crime listed in the local police station. Or perhaps even more so all those crimes that the victims decided, for whatever reason, not to report. When I’m out walking alone I have to adopt the garb of an innocent, of a decent law-abiding citizen merely out for some fresh air, to stretch the muscles, to exercise so that I don’t cause any grief to the over-stretched saints of ‘our’ health service. Not that it will be our health service much longer, sold off to corporate power to see what profits they can tear from it in their incessant drive to eviscerate the good. Presumably politicians are already getting over excited about the possibilities of privatising their own services. We discern in the entrails that there will be a G4S and Serco run ‘parliament’. Have no concern, the messy business of democracy will no longer be part of deal. It is so inefficient. Come on, come on let’s get down to the nitty gritty, the political class have made efficiency to the be all and end all of political programmes. This is caused not by leaves on the line but by the complete absence of any political imagination on their part and, as usual, their abject corruption. They have almost owned up to the totality of their programme as the further enriching of the already fabulously wealthy.
The rest of us better get used to the idea of endless austerity. In other words it’s back to business as usual, just as it’s been for the last few thousand years.
One last plea before it’s too late, please: can I move to somewhere warm, year round warmth. It’s not too much to ask is it. Oh and a bit of food please. Oh yes and while I think of it, a public library and free movies shown in the town square. OK? Just more thing – that glass of red wine. Thank you.
I promise not to cause any trouble.