Basement Archive Room

It's an 8 page ebook.
Well, pdf.
It's a sort of partial archive.

Basement Archive Room

Print it off, pass it along. e-mail it out to your friends.
I'd appreciate it.

There'll be more.

Goodnight.

Penultimate

So this is the beginning of the end.

I've put up a Christmas story at AllTheGhosts.

I have a New Years present planned.

The latest Noah and The Whale album is very good.
And Star Trek socks are even better.

House Arrest

Lately, I have been experimenting with other blog clients, such as tumblr, which has worked out pretty well as a sort of scrapbook.
So I've created a wordpress blog. I'm thinking of moving there as it has more of a 'website' feel. If I do, then this page will become an archive, but sort of dead at the same time.
It isn't quite finished yet, but I would appreciate anybody's input or opinion on it.

Apocalypse

I have a short story, Apocalypse, up on The Whistling Fire. It went live yesterday.

Cassandra

There's a new post on my tumblr today, because I'm experimenting and using it as a way to jot down ideas in an attempt to formulate real ideas at a time when time itself is difficult to come by.

I've managed to lose all the nibs to my dip pen aside for one which is broken.

I'm also listening to "Who killed Amanda Palmer?" and Patti Smith. Because I can. And Amanda Palmer is awesome. And Ben Folds can produce an album. Really. Bloody. Well.

It may only be Monday, but I am looking toward Friday and half a bottle of Drambuie.

I would like to thank my cat...

Dave Wills, known as 'Loose Cannon' to some, has nominated me for a blogger award. Thanks.



As per the rules (sort of), here are some blogs I nominate for this award, some are faithful readers, some sublime writers. Good bloggers all.

Clark Blue. He hasn't been posting all that often, but when he does... This is someone who can use language.

This Is Not An Exit. My favourite commenter, and an honest blogger.

Trouble, Thinks. A self proclaimed artist, musician, photographer, poet, saint at heart, sinner in practice (from her profile). Says everything.

wagner israel cilio iii I'm not sure how to describe this blog. Read it. That's all I'll say.

Pieces of You I think the layout of this blog is great (and the content, never forget the content).

A few creative facts about myself.
- I'm originally a creator of equations. (I studied Astronomy, Space Science and Astrophysics)
- I believe in the novella.
- I draw.
- India ink on paper, is there anything better?
- My dreams often fail me.
- I prefer few words.
- Creation is the result of destruction.

DREAM/ LO ST/ ART

I am going to start placing the posts that are based upon dreams here

Lost Art is a project I'm working on.

#99, One more, and to the next 100

I started this blog in August last year. This is the 99th post.

Looking back, it feels a bit weird. If I knew what I'd be doing right now, I would have laughed at myself, and even felt a little shame.
Life is so ordinary, isn't it?

I hope my writing has improved. F&#@ that, I know it has. That was the point, and I have tried not to lose sight of that. At a few points I did. This time last year I stopped blogging altogether, between the start of October and mid December, and then again until January. I blamed writer's block.

There is no such thing.

I now update on a regular basis and each time, I try to push myself a little further up the hill. The funny thing about hills is, of course, that gravity wins when you're too tired. I think I understand Sisyphus a little better now.

His problem was that he was too proud. I have next to none. So I will keep writing, because I have nothing left to lose.

Over the past year I have started two novels, ditched one and now I'm diving back into the second. Maybe by next year I'll have finished it. Whatever happens, these words will feel strange by then.

Up next is a short story I thought I hadn't finished. Why should I let it waste away amongst endless tweaking?

Shed your pride, and you'll stand a little taller.

Demon/Snare

It’s this series of dreams I’ve been having where myself, and all of my friends, have children who, rather than being the product of two people, are versions of our younger selves.

One of my friends has a website, the banner to which depicts her bare shoulders and innocent face, while beside her sits her child in quiet malevolence, with those same eyes, turned dark with intention.

The dreams are accompanied by a sense of loss and entrapment; the feeling that I can no longer attain what I had always hoped.

He was my best friend. We were sitting at the top of the stairs with his father, discussing the revelation of my fatherhood. His father left me with a glass of whiskey.

I’ll leave you two to it. And he disappeared down, to somewhere darker and deeper.

How are you feeling?

How do you think?

It’s not over yet.

It will be.

You want a beer?

He pulls one out of a box, dripping and cold.

Yeah, but I haven’t finished this. I hold up the glass.

Hurry up then.

I wince and gulp and force it down.

The mother is someone I don’t know, or half remember. She is veiled in superstition and we share contempt, left to brew.

She said to my own mother, at the park while they prepared food and in front of my sister: I knew that he would be the father of my child because he is a demon.

F.O.W No. 36 and a half

Warren Ellis has infected me with some kind of horrid man flu via the internet.

So why does cough syrup taste like crap?

I can hear boss music from FFVII bleeding through the walls and I like it.

My Uncle came to visit and he reminded my brother about the time he went to see him in Oxford. They were in a pub with said brother's friends and my Uncle had his dog collar on (he's a priest).

He turned to one of the friends and said: "If you down that pint in one go, I'll give you a fiver."

He promptly downed the pint and grinned, holding his hand out.

"Never trust a priest."

I started writing my fifty words and then gave up.

"The door rattled to the base of its bones. The wood cracked, and splintered. I sheltered beneath quivering hands held up, begging for transubstiated bread. They bled and I wept.
Eloi, Eloi, lema sumthinorother."

Space...

I have this idea for a comic. It centres around the crew of a small space station sometime later this century. It'll be a meditation on isolation and how, away from the typical constraints of society, people deal with death. I've written the dialogue for the first two pages: they start off in darkness. I've started formulating the series of events and conversations between the two main characters. There'll be flashbacks of Earth, one of which I've made rough notes of in prose form.

And I have started to develop the characters into what I hope will feel like real people. It will be a slow burner, and it will be in black and white, and there will be no thought bubbles or captions. It will just be.

Here's a prelim sketch I did in paint (unfinished). I thought that, for one of the covers, it would work. Showing three of the astronauts waiting before launch. She looks right at you, with that serious look on her face. The main character shies away, looking up at nothing, but maybe the bright lights above him. And the third, his eyes are shut and his expression shows only serenity.
As research, I've been sifting through NASA images and sketching those I find particularly striking. It helps that I have some knowledge on the subject already.

As a side note, STS-128 is preparing for de-orbit around 2am tomorrow morning, or if the weather is poor, at 4am. This has been Discovery's last ever mission to the ISS.

Things that make me believe I am losing my mind

#1 I hear voices at night and they keep me up.

#2 The phones rings for no more than a second, and I don't recognise the number.

#3 That's it, actually. As I once I heard: once is a fluke, twice is a coincidence, thrice is a trend.

So I think I'm fine.

Another dream

This time I alight a boat - in the full summer heat. The water reflects a jetty made from lacquered timber and all the people populating the waterfront: families and pets, babies in strollers and mothers in summer hats.

This boat feels small, and I am the only passenger. I can't see the driver, he (or she?) is piloting from down below. We set off, plunging into the lapping waves. The bow dips under the water and I feel unsteady; I am a nodding ornament on a car dashboard, rocking about with feet firmly planted.

I have a satchel, tied around my body from shoulder to thigh. The books are heavy and I realise - a moment too late - that my half read copy of 'The End of The Affair' is insecure and it falls out, dropping like a stone. Blue cover hitting blue water.

I try to perform a rescue, but I am too inadequate, unable to reach beyond this unreal body.

As I arrive over to the other side, maybe ten metres away at most, I mention to my friend, in panicked tones, the woe of my loss. He has nothing to say.

I watch the book floating, undamaged and unreachable, bobbing in the reflected light of the water. Light brighter than a bare lightbulb, and as white as blindness.

I realise that I used my Oyster card as a bookmark, and that I will have to get a new one. All I can think of is lost money.

Travelling poet.

The sun is high and harsh, little shadow forms beneath the craning sides of slumped buildings.

“Excuse me.”

We walk on.

His chest is bare, all sinew and slick and bronzed from the sun. A hoodie hangs off his shoulder, too big for his ravished frame.
There’s a kid nearby, cradling a beat up bike. He blocks half the alley and we move into single file. Are they together?

“That man’s trying to talk to you.” He points at the only other person there.

We are forced to accept his attention.
“I'm not begging or anything; I'm a travelling poet.”

“Sorry, we can’t stay.”

“Just a few lines.”

“We have to be somewhere.”

We try not to walk faster.

“Thanks for your time.” He calls out. A thin veil of malice sits in his voice.

“He’s been there for years.”

A very disturbing dream I had last night

A shopping mall: clean, open and sterile, built from steel and glass, reflecting the sun in a prism of mirrors; constructed out of light. Dressed in white, I slip through to the exit, where mouths scream and muscles contort. The people are filthy. Violence has erupted from sleeping paranoia and open desperation. A young woman falls across my path – her eyes are shuttered, her hair hangs over pale bloodless cheeks in a death veil. Her family clutch at one another as I cross over the path of her broken body.

A shadow passes.

Silence reigns.

The final calm.

And then the true light arrives, and it blinds them all before they feel the wave of heat. Ghosts are seared into concrete as the atmosphere becomes plasma. I bathe in the warmth of the end.

Rent Free Ad-Space

I am a consumer of what I believe to be epic proportions, I know this from the multitude of plastic bags littering, no – populating my living space. Their amorphous, colour intensified forms are a carpet of consumerism, a monument; a capitalist Elysium. Rent free ad-space to all I shop with, to whom I am willing to pay for the privilege.

They crisp beneath my feet like shingle on a shallow beach.

Fifty Odd Words No. 21

Forty five minutes, marching through rain. It turned out to be faster than the bus.

Earlier, I had been on the train, I was going to meet someone. I forgot my phone.

“This. Is an answering machine…” I busted my thumb beating up the phone box.

The blood looked too red to be mine.

Long away...

I have been gone a while, where the internet does not exist. as in: I have moved into my new flat and, unfortunately, we as yet have no internet. Hence the now endangered and rare to find blog post. It will get worse as, on the twentieth of July, I am going away for ten whole days. It is unlikely I will get access before then. Expect sporadic posts.

50 moments

1. Jumping into a pool when you can't see the bottom.
2. Drinking from the bottle
3. Slurping the last drops of a milkshake.
4. Seeing the horizon.
5. Seeing how sodium street lamps make everything appear brown, like mud.
6. Standing, in the midday heat, at a bus stop when there is only silence.
7. Thunderstorms.
8. Cats fighting.
9. Stolen cars piercing through the night.
10. Oppressive dreams.
11. Eating noodles.
12. Your hands after you come out of the bath.
13. Lying under a tree and not looking up, only listening.
14. The sound of a cricket ball hitting the sweet spot.
15. Getting caught in the rain.
16. Watching someone talk, but not hearing a word.
17. Struggling to stay awake.
18. Elderly couples holding hands.
19. Sitting with no trousers on.
20. The first time I saw you cry.
21. I knew you were upset, but didn't know what to say.
22. Hiding in wardrobes.
23. Not understanding song lyrics.
24. Understanding poetry.
25. Not knowing whether to grieve.
26. Bright blues eyes reflecting in a camera flash.
27. Laughing, and burping, and then feeling a little sick.
28. Sitting on the steps in the back garden, drinking coffee.
29. Summer mornings that are cold and bright.
30. Waiting for winter sun.
31. Forgetting what to say.
32. Wondering how many stars there are.
33. Knowing you can never count them all.
34. Trying it anyway.
35. Breaking through the pain barrier.
36. Smelling brass.
37. That first, worst, crippling hangover.
38. Daylight.
39. Moonlight.
40. Realising your favourite moments weren't moments at all.
41. Taking a swig of cold beer after a hard day and not caring how
42. Running out into the ocean.
43. I swam out too far once, and wasn't sure if I could make it back.
44. Watching orchards materialise out of snowy mist.
45. Hearing a twig crackle in the fire.
46. Missing out.
47. Realising I might never see you again.
48. The look in your eyes and you asked someone else to tell me.
49. Being unsure of what to say at the end.
50. Or how to say it.

Cafe

This is a transitory place, there is a sheen to the floor and a rigid, uniform comfort to the furniture. Inoffensive local radio seeps into your hearing and old songs - those ones you recognise with unmistakeable hooks - loop with rapid frequency. The extractor fan hums. Oil sizzles. The crisp sound of a newspaper page turning hiccups between loud sips. One man circles with a Biro in apparent random bursts. His face is studious and furrowed. His lips pursed and vision narrowed.

Scarlett buses lurch and roll. White vans - with their blank, identical canvasses - form a train.
Very few people sit, most are passengers in time, carried through by a need to progress.

Take the idea that life is transitory: we are passengers in time. The places we inhabit are clean, clear open spaces. Blank canvasses at all times Because we move on so much, never really staying in any one place. The current theme is to build from glass - open structures made of light. We decorate in white and magnolia: pastel shades. Borders are soft, lines undefined.
The natural order is to descend into chaos. Entropy increases.

I scribbled this down when I was in a cafe by the tube station in Turnpike Lane. I like cafes: you can sit there, drinking coffee and eating a bacon sandwich while watching everything float past. It got me thinking about transience. (Note: in my notebook, I couldn't tell if I had written 'clear' or 'clean'. But then I realised: aren't they just the same thing? So I put both in.) Also, Warren Ellis talked about this idea in his graphic novel Desolation Jones. He referred to it as Supermodernism; I have never been able to find any other reference to it.

On the subject of transience, I made this slow/rapid (I can't remember which) half formed thought while sitting on the back steps behind my house:

One of Paul Pope's essays struck a personal chord with me recently. It discussed, in the most part, Hugo Pratt's "Corto Maltese" and some of the devices he used to portray that character. At one point he flashed upon the idea that life is a transitory thing, but that we attempt to make it static and unchanging for fear of that very thing.

That resonated with me as I was stumbling, and attempting to run, with a short story weaved around that very same idea.

I've made extensive notes on that story, took a break from it, and returned to it today. It feels like it might finally be coming back together.

This will be a line in it (sort of).

"Isn't it funny how, in the English Language, the phrase 'fair weather' has a similar meaning to insubstantial? I think that says a lot about us as a people."