The Tower

*

On the 44th floor of a three-cornered tower

in a city on the coast,

the mayor looks out over a shimmering sea.

He can see across to another shore

where another country begins,

where another mayor looks back across at him.

Sometimes he phones up the other mayor, but says nothing.

"I know it's you, you bastard," says the voice

on the other end of the line.

Each mayor imagines the devious machinations of the other

but the cities continue to trade the things they produce.

The coming and going of ships

marks the passing of time.

Then one day ...

The mayor's assistant stands at the window

looking through a pair of binoculars.

"Oh no!" he exclaims.

"What is it?" enquires the mayor.

"A new tower! They are building a taller tower!" he gasps,

turning to meet the glare of his boss.

*

Mapping the Infinite

*

You say that life is just pattern recognition. Patterns within yourself. Patterns you can see all around. Stories played out on a map of time and space. Of course, you are part of the pattern, you may influence the pattern. Any time you attempt to draw a conclusion, you must bear this in mind.

So you say let's map reality, the world as it appears to ourselves. There is nothing else. There is only the world as we see it, the way we experience it. Let's deceive ourselves in the most entertaining ways possible.

You refuse simple categorisations. Better to be in a state of becoming, that to have arrived at a fixed point. To stop changing is to die. And you know that weaknesses are what make people so interesting. Beauty lies in the imperfections.

As you travel around in your body, it is fun to see how you react to the situations you met. You are endlessly entertained by yourself. The situations you meet are infinite in number.

Life is infinite. You are sure of that. And you are both comforted and scared by that fact.

*

Shikibu - Love Nandayo?

coffee, cheese cake and omiyage (small packet near the coffee cup)

At the orange cafe:

Waitress Tomoko: Hello Andy!

Me: Hello! How was Singapore?

Waitress Tomoko: Shanghai!

Me: Oh! Sorry. Shanghai. How was it?

Waitress Tomoko: It was hot. The food wasn't so good.

Me: Did you have fun?

Waitress Tomoko: Yes, we had fun!

Me: Sounds good!

oh dear

Sonic Youth T-Shirt Ex-Girlfriend

*

I stole my sister's boyfriend.

It was all whirlwind, heat and flash.

Within a week we killed my parents

and hit the road.

I was reading her Sonic Youth T-shirt out loud.

And then,

"So you like Sonic Youth?" I said.

"I've never heard them." She replied.

So the next time I played her a CD

and asked her what she thought.

"It's not good." She said.

Sonic Youth T-shirt ex-girlfriend.

*

another drawing from the orange cafe.

food for your ears - a chat with the MUSIC MONSTER.

Hello MUSIC MONSTER. What have you been listening to recently?

I'VE BEEN LISTENING TO THE DOOMED HIP-POP OF PASHLY.

How does it sound?

IT'S ACE! JUST LISTEN!

What else?

THE EQUALLY AMAZING FARAH AND DESIRE. BUT BE CAREFUL. THIS IS MUSIC WITH A HEART OF ICE. THIS IS THE SOUND OF DARK NIGHTS WITH ONLY THE FLICKERING STREET LIGHTS FOR COMPANY.

JUST LISTEN.

*

Notes from outside the abandoned pigeon hospital / Transmissions from the city

*

Yesterday you walked around the city and all the time you were doubling numbers in your head - two, four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four, one-hundred and twenty-eight and so on. You remembered doing this when you were young and it occured to you that life works in circles. The numbers pushed the sadness out of your heart. For a short time anyway, because you had to stop when the numbers got too big for your head and began to spill into the street.

Nobody likes to see that kind of thing.

-

The world is complete. You can scratch and scrape away at it, but all that's worth knowing is already there inside of you.

As you write these words, your eyes are drawn to the mute TV up on the wall. It beams out pop videos. Each one an alternate reality. This one now appears to be about a world where people communicate by dancing. It looks like a good place to be.

The world lasts for three-and-a-half minutes, it shakes its hair, it smiles at the camera.

There are no hidden layers of meaning. All is there on the surface. To each and every person you meet appears a different you.

You can hear the hum of warm bodies talking at tables in the place where you are right now.

You are an observer to your own strange actions. Every encounter happens by chance, and that makes reality feel even more fragile. Your soul feels heavy and tired, but still you crave more. You are speeding faster and faster into the future. The landscape is blurred. You follow the threads. You are sure that there is more heartbreak lying in wait.

Today, messages sent from your mobile communicator yield no replies.

-

dear world, I have burned up half my heart

dear world, I only have so much more to give

and you are the only world I know.

You write.

*

monster on the wall

*

You go to the cafe. The same one you often go to these days to draw your pictures. You like it for many reasons. For example, the colour scheme is predominantly orange, there is a wide-screen TV on the wall showing pop videos, and every time the coffee comes in a different cup and the cake on a differently coloured plastic plate.

Just after you sit down the waitress who once said your drawings were "kawaii!" comes up to you. She says something a little too quickly and quietly for you to catch and then she draws a rectangle in the air with her fingers. You aren't sure what she's trying to tell you. The menu is a rectangular shape. Is she asking for a menu? No, that would be strange because you are not a waitress and she should be the one giving you a menu. Then, she beckons you to come around the corner and it clicks - she wants you to see the mural you drew on last week.

You follow her and take a look. It's very colourful. Down at the bottom is a green monster waving at you and it feels good to have one of your monsters on the wall at the cafe where you go to draw, and drink coffee, and eat cake.

Feels like you belong a little.

You take a picture to post on your blog:

Forest Story (reprise)

*

Remember The Forest Story ? (see February and March archives). It has now been tested on kid (I think it's a story for kids and adults alike). Of course, she understands it all far better than I do. 

I received this email.

_

dear polar bear,

i printed off the little book and stapled it together so that i would not have to scroll through your blog repeatedly. it made a tiny book, about the size of my palm.

here are the things you may or may not have known about this story:

the main character is Egg E. at first i thought it was Eggie, until learning that those other egg guys on the first page have letter names too.

the rainbow bird flew into a rainbow, and it stuck to him. he flies rainbows through the sky now.

the little fish near the top of the page where Egg E jumps into the water - he's sad. don't know why. 

the creature who will save the forest is named Girilli, and he used to think he was a dog. he eats flowers, and he is friends with bugs.

the only part that i add to the words is to say AND HE THROWS IT AT THE EVIL CREATURE! at the part when evil is destroyed. 

it is well-read. 

_

Thankyou for reading!

*

Lost in Time

*

She said, It's the quiet people who make me nervous.

And I declined to comment,

so that her words became a fluttering bird with no place to land.

I was remembering summer nights when I was a school kid

staying out late until it was barely light enough

to see my fellow cub scouts.

Thinking about the perfect arc of a football under moonlight,

and how I knew little of the adult world back then,

having yet to deal with its labyrinth complexities.

Now I miss the pleasure of finding earwigs hidden under rocks

and travelling everywhere at light speed.

I suppose growing up is an exercise 

in getting over tiny disappointments 

like discovering that the ability to climb trees

is a much undervalued skill in this world.

And suddenly you blinked me back to the present moment,

where multiple futures 

beckoned us towards them

*

the quick rough sketch ends up being better than the coloured picture.

in fact, i think that this quick line drawing is about the best thing i've drawn in all of my drawing time. i couldn't hope to reproduce it. i couldn't capture the expression a second time. (the drawing is based on a real person)

*

colourful cafe poster

Maybe you can just see the little green monster, slightly hidden behind the left shoulder of the painter, waving from the blue water.

I drew that.

*

cafe poem

*

I found a perfect moment

at 3:27 on a Sunday afternoon.

It arrived entirely without warning

in a noisy cafe where I sat drinking coffee

while drawing my pictures.

I was caught between past and future

memory and dreams that interweave

until they are no different from one another.

Let's just say my mind plays tricks on me.

So when a tranquil feeling took hold for an instant

I took out my pen and notebook.

I wrote it. I named it. I called it,

3:27 on a Sunday afternoon.

*

new book.

page 14. this book is finished.

"yes dear? what would you like?"

big cake

You Can't Lose It All If You Don't Have Anything to Lose

*


The age of jets was wasted on us.


Our cameras snapped greedily on distant continents
but all the while our souls remained untouched.


Navigating an expanse of carefully applied make-up
I search for cracks in the smile of the stewardess
and when the analysis reveals nothing I turn to
counting the tops of mountains thousands of feet below.


Upgrade. Upgrade. Upgrade;
The call of the marauding business travellers.


Smothered under a blanket of stars
our dreams were set in corridors
and out on the shifting ice-flows
where language ceased to function
only our eyes could tell of a sadness inside.


We observed how the whisps of clouds matched the curls
of smoke from a cigarette. How the spiral of a shell matched the whirl
of water as it drained from the sink. How the colour of the pretty girl's eyes matched the colour
of the branches of trees and how the rhythmic sound of heels on the station floor
matched the eternal beat pulsing inside all of our chests

yet still these things told us nothing of where we had come from.


And the sun was there to make us feel stupid.


*

by me. with a little help from my pens

garden

the house where i stayed a night

In the Heart of Derelict Equations

*

Here in an anaethetised version of the present
I'm reading new theories about the birth
of the universe.

This universe, where you and reside.
This universe, the only one I know of.

Matter and anti-matter appear to matter,

the superheroes of the story,
destined to annihilate one another.



If the most important question for the human race
turns out to be, "What happened?"

leaving us staring dumbly up at the stars,
as they in turn wink down at us knowingly

trying to unpick the knots in our shoelaces
or on the impossible search for end
of the roll of sellotape,

then I'd say we're lucky to have made it this far.



And even if it turns out we are living
in the folds of a tiny probability,

let's live it right to the end of the line of zeroes
until the anti-matter gets us.

*

comedy

book

I Didn't Know It Would Be This Way

*

In a small capsule circling the earth
a security guard is flicking slowly through a dog-eared magazine
examining the photographs of nymphomaniac droids.

He doesn't see the alien spacecraft
going silently by.

He's on a tea-break.



The aliens choose what they believe to be ordinary names of the day - Pete, Barry and Saint Michael - and slip unnoticed into Earth's society.



They soon become confused by what they find:

So the one known as "Pete" thinks that tears must be a mechanism for watering plants. It's the only explanation he can come up with.

The "Jeff" alien classifies laughter as a highly infectious respiratory problem.

And "Saint Michael" stabs himself in the eye with a fork.



It isn't long before they leave,

accelerating to the speed of light,

pushing it to the max.


*