felttipben

Monday, February 8, 2010

Work in progress

WHEN THE KITE CAME DOWN, it hit Helaine Kirsten so squarely on the back of the head that she collapsed immediately and began to vomit.

Click. Helaine takes another photograph, this time of Emile Wise, not looking . . . vacantly biting into one of the English Coxes . . . attention on Jeanette who lies in the background, clearly somewhere else, lost in those pages somewhere . . . coming all this way . . . does she even want to be here, or can't bear to be alone? . . . .

. . . .a few wisps of cloud . . . the September sky, the end of summer . . . a weary sun beats its last onto the bleached grass . . . Parliament Hill extending off into the sky, steeple penetrating horizon . . . Jeanette, belly down, unshoed purple nylon feet playing in tiny, persistent movements . . . London, threatening, as it will from anywhere, to swallow them all up, all these dreams . . . the blare of children, birdsong, caws, tennis ball pocks, distant scurry of rubber on clay . . . street noise from the nearby Highgate Road, onto whose long shoulder buses huddle wearily . . . a silent police helicopter, motionless, unseen . . . the adults composed, sunbathing . . . pale girls sat, English shoulder straps cautiously half-down, and between those bare grassy feet glimpses of underwear are caught by those who dare look into breezy summer skirts for long enough. . . .

. . . .Apparently Jeanette's all-night runs of Fluxus and aleatory music have been going down a treat on the Constance Green Ward . . . one four-and-a-half hour performance of La Monte Young’s Composition 1960 #7, arranged for two vacuum cleaners tuned precisely to B and F# respectively, coincided with two overnight and otherwise unexplained recoveries, and word, of course, got round. . . .

Another Click. "Huh?" E., hoping that the secret glance at J.'s thigh, through the hole that has started in her purple tights, had gone uncaptured, or at least unnoticed.

His apple is bitterly sour and already he can feel cuts on the inside of his mouth start to ooze, swollen and tender gums of many meals to come, tentative bloodied flossing and brushing, fuck, what a pain, so many days lost . . . "Jesus, did you put razor blades in this one?" . . . images of hard skin tearing into gum, shards pulled across teeth (cutting through enamel, bone, jarring nerves), getting jammed right in underneath inflamed marginal gingiva . . . is it still in there? . . . every small movement making a new incision . . . mucous membrane already scarred from years of worry, nocturnal teeth grinding . . . blood pooling soon at the back of the throat, gums swollen impossibly large around teeth, malic acid dissolving into frail and leaking tissue, all of it coming apart . . . sticky fingers, glazed, puts one carefully to his lips, partly for comfort . . . three more bites, eating the rest out of spite . . . starting at the leafy asshole, the starry cavity . . . bypassing previous fears over the presence of amygdalin, the sugar-cyanide compound contained within . . . taste of haem prominent, mixed with sugar and hot thick saliva . . . tongue expanding filling the oral cavity, seizing its own part in this sensory onslaught, tasting delicious apple and iron, fuck yes, mocking . . . swallowed down into that dark pit, the new recepticle of dreams to come . . . a prima materia of blood and sugar, acid and snot. . . .

J. pipes in, E. isn't completely paying attention, still thinking about his sore mouth . . . those tights, wondering if that hole has got any bigger, wanting to bite into it, soothing, a perfectly circular bruise, all purple, flesh and nylon and raw gum, lips. . . .

A little way down the hill, two trees, close together, are full of children. At the bottom of one is a girl, bent forward, offering legs-up to other kids who scramble on her back.

J. is passed the camera . . . another picture . . . the two of them in black and white, in 35mm . . . dark Helaine hair flowing onto white shoulders . . . arms curved gently half-hugging knees . . . Emile head turned away . . . through spectral coloured petroleum pool, reflected back in thick lanthanum glass . . . dark pool of silky silver halide and nitrocellulose . . . the void, the well of memory . . . focal point lost, staring into J. and beyond her, through . . . bygone days surfacing, in pink blossom freely walking, scattered everywhere . . . cold autumnal skies, cloud thin white streaks Pollock’d across pale morning blue and pink . . . peculiar pastel shaded houses . . . road signs from another time that have survived, curiously . . .every year, back there. . . .

. . . .down the most familiar suburban streets that join onto the endless imaginary landscape . . . taking old buses, forcing a way down to that other stream of thought, horizonless, invoking all those incomplete parts of experience . . . hours, whole days of his life spent like this, alone, unable to escape the same feelings, locked in this routine day after day, gazing out from the top deck onto shopfronts, colourful Cafés and estate agents, inviting . . . a sense of belonging at once severed by bus windows . . . ghostly image reflecting back . . . all the while moving onward, onward but nowhere . . .

. . . .finding himself suddenly in an empty room in one of these places, inexplicably, looking out back onto bare and blackened trees that go on and on, onto nothing . . . the void beyond, the silence . . . dawn, that dream again, with her . . . image faded somewhat at the edges . . . remembers waking, any one of these days, too early . . . times they had that first winter . . . you walked right into it again, didn't you? . . . doowgh! There it is, down I go. . . .

‘WOULD YOU LIKE TO TAKE A BATH WITH ME?’ he asks, one day.

‘. . . No.’ Trying to brush off the rejection, Aubrey leaves the room, draws himself a bath anyway, or possibly it will be a cold shower for him now . . . not thinking herself prudish in any way but, well . . . disappointed, sits and waits now in the living room, bathed in light filtered through black specked pane, on a sofa that’s stiff with grease, sweat, dust. Tentatively puts her shoes on a coffee table where a book, Modern Primitives, is ambitiously placed, let down by mugs, long abandoned, something still in the bottom there, a t-shirt, strewn, half off, underwear similarly scattered on the floor, leading to a large loudspeaker against the wall . . . finds a record, it’s the Mahler 7, the Berlin Philharmoniker . . . turns it up loud and A., who can hear it clearly enough through the wall, begins to masturbate, takes the showerhead and, sitting down, blasts steaming hot water onto his cock, shrinking, exciting at once too many nerve endings until he pisses in ecstacy, by mistake, all to the Langsam-Allegro . . . for H., it’s just a confusion of notes, orchestral bluster, can’t make sense of the form as it unfolds . . . mind so scattered, can’t let feelings hang on it . . . for they won’t hang, scattered also . . . this strange purgatorio between public and private spheres, longing for home . . . fight for survival reduced to laundry, hygiene, breakfast. . . .

*

. . . . It doesn’t take much to wreck the already fragile sleep she has . . . whole nights are lost, not merely to sleeplessness, which will follow later, but to staying up, keeping watch, a solitary vigil made to her hope, dying, that things are not as they seem, that, too scared to call, her messages will be answered, messages that have each expanded further her already considerable horizon of embarrassment, of loathing . . . staring at blue digits of an LCD screen, only thing that illuminates her pale face in the dark, counting the minutes as they pass like seconds in her no-time, trance-like, wondering if something is wrong . . . try, perhaps, again . . . try to stay awake with a series of films, each more surreal than the last . . . actually laughing at points, can’t tell if she’s hallucinating or what . . . wrapped, a little lost, in her duvet . . . like food poisoning, or influenza, body taking emergency measures - purging, cleansing, evacuation, vomiting . . . time passing like a fever dream, days into each other, without a certain end in sight . . . spiritual elation of having fasted for so many days . . . too scared to fall asleep, to witness again the shameful recapitulation of events that unfold every night, the endless horror . . . fucking herself for the fifth time in these pajamas while she watches Henry Fonda in The Lady Eve (1941), wearing her scent into worn, patchy flannel, libido absent, hurts but it’s all she can do, too drunk to care or even notice, comes . . . (Barbara Stanwyck holding the young buffoon’s head close, caressing curls) . . . but without pleasure, some pale contraction of her imflamed cunt . . . seven days now and her breasts have sunk, skin thick with dirt and sweat, salts . . . pissing weakly. . . .