in the gagossian

Flies buzz silently in the severed head
Of a curious cow. Three North American
Women, one with an ankle strapped like
A footballer, wear florid dresses and stare
At flies which buzz silently round the
Severed head of the curious cow.

A watch in a bathroom graced by a
Hypothermic carcase, sinews strapped
With nylon tags, tells no time. Mandarin
Dress pronounces Damien iconic.

On an orange gloss, pinned butterflies
Riff off Garibaldi flies. The women want
More. Muscled staff cart pink and sky
Blue gloss from the wings, still wrapped
In their bounds. A triptych of collectors
Feed on the tricoloured triptych. Flies
Feed on the cow’s eyes. The dresses head to
Inspect Bacon. Butterflies and co retreat
Backstage. We have all evolved; ten minutes
Nearer to sampling the state of the cow.

dean in a white cube

[An extract from the novel Grand Prix, 2003]

The next stage will be learning how to reduce consciousness to a state of non-feeling without the help of stimulants. Still a long way to go before we become sophisticated enough to pull that one off. However, on the day Dean met Aziza, he felt as though he might have got close to an understanding of what it might be like. He’d been inspired by a visit to the Damien Hirst exhibition at the White Cube, in the shadow of the giant charity doll in Hoxton Square.

The exhibition was the latest offering from the enfant terrible of what used to be called Brit Art. Hirst became famous in the late twentieth century for chopping cows in half and painting spots on boats. His latest exhibition was more of the same. Trademark cows cut in half. Plenty of trademark gore. A few trademark spots. And in the upstairs gallery, four trademark cows’ heads floating in formaldehyde, the modern aspic. Each head had its own glass cabinet and these cabinets were then arranged in a crucifix formation, lending gratuitous religious undertones to the oeuvre. The four cows’ heads, flesh flapping in fluid, had been impaled with a dazzling array of sharp instruments: carving knives, cleavers, scissors, hatpins and sheer shards of broken glass.

Dean dwelt on the exhibition’s macabre qualities as he described it to me. His tone was reverential. I recalled the meat cleaver he’d been wielding at the Spitz gig. I guessed I must have visited the exhibition around the same time as Dean. It hadn’t impressed me all that much: it seemed exactly what you’d expect from a quack doctor who’d resorted to recycling his old tricks.

Whereas, for Dean, the exhibition had been an epiphany. He stood in the upstairs room, captivated by the four cabinets. Fascinated, he squatted and stared at the array of weapons inserted into the cows’ heads. The cabinets were knee-high, and he got right down to their level, lying on the floor and gazing into the cows’ dead eyes. What he saw, he told me, was the most accurate possible rendition of life. We’re all of us dumb animals having knives stabbed into our faces by a vengeful motherfucker artist in the name of aesthetics, only none of us realise it. When I told him that the cows were dead, that they couldn’t feel anything, he looked at me as though I’d missed the point. He told me that just because you were lucky enough to be dead doesn’t mean your memories die with you. You didn’t escape from your senses that easily. The secret was discovering how to accommodate the pain. These cows endured, day in, day out. They were the victim of a horrendous crime, but they didn’t let it get to them. That was something, he told me. Something valuable to learn from.

boxers and bratwurst

When temporary solvency rears its head a man's got to indulge.

espejo de pared 3

otra vez

espejo de pared

[stag afterglow]

Dawn scrapes the lid off the sky.
Having confessed not once not twice
But thrice. Another shot of vodka for my pains.
Purple lines married to yellow tears
Slice through the firmament. So
We danced. We fell over in our stupor.
We night tailed through taxi midnight.
We imbibed. We ascended the stage, were
Displaced, loved, neglected, revered.
We did all those things and more. You and
I. And it''s morning and once again I
Appear to have survived and the Finchley
Futon is kind to my back. Creosote spangles
Teardrops. Light is made of whites and blues.
The fancy dawn is put to bed.

Un espejo de pared looms boxed.
Los albicelestes came through.
I cheered unlike a montevidean.
In a british accent. Shout at the
Devil in the screeen, throw foreign
Words like a turn. Saying things
Drunken makes them sound like
Fluency to an untrained ear. Half
A line, how do you cut it and confess
Confess confess. But the priest fails
Me, so I chastise him, regale him with
Insults, wait for the bus, the bus
Will take us home, no matter our sins.
No matter our home. No matter.
The bus that will bring us together
When atoms melt. Welcome to
The stag. Use the Horn to counter
The Fear. Try and make par.
Wind up the bride. Do your thing.

spanish word for the day 13

Felicidad

Sometimes used as a name. As in - Come here, Felicidad. Sit down at the table. Be quiet. Why is it that you cannot help imagining that a child called by that name would grow up to have sad eyes? Be better at listening than speaking?

advantages of insomnia

It's never all that late.

spanish word for the day 4

Cumpleanos

Because it is.

(Though not any more)

spanish word for the day 8

Tonterias

Make you giggle like a chapel bell.

king meets prince

There’s a pixie taking a piss. He turns up on the heavenly stage ten minutes later, saying he’s just seen a ghost, knowing his audience should glean what he’s on about. He looks his listeners in the eye. Close enough to match the wrinkles that flirt with his eyes when we smile. In the background some fools hubbub. In the foreground, a few dozen are invited, if they wish, to dwell on his every word. At one point he sings come on Eileen. At another he suddenly slips into the Prince’s tune, beyond compare. Only a King, bold and celtic, his guitar simmering below the boil, could get away with the barely audible intensity. He’s a troubadour, singing bittersweet songs of love, jumping at the cats with nothing on, barking at the moon, not one bit ashamed. His eyes twinkle and then hide. 2001,A Space Odyssey long gone, keeps time with its regal pace. An obelisk glistens in a regency salon. Read between the lines and you’ll see persistence in the face of untold mistakes, ephemeral love, the virtue of knowing that if you stick at it, you might just get by.

spanish word for the day 7

Barbaro

To be said either in a heavily inflected English accent; or with a sense of delight.

spanish word for the day 5

Desesperado

A word that always seems almost out of reach. Until it catches up with you. At which point you will know that you are.

spanish word for the day 6

Golasso

To be screamed with many exclamation marks at either side of your breath.

spanish word(s) for the day 2

Suspiro & Boludo

Two today. One of which makes me laugh, even when I am called it.
The other of which always does exactly what it says on the tin.

quarter past

===

A friend stands outside
On the phone. Saying things
He could not say inside.
People go to bed in the
Upstairs warren. A cai
Pirinha for every decade
Resides within. The day
Is as long as the night is
As long as you keep your
Nerve. A few calls. A game
Or two. Eggs Benedict.
Optimism. Half an hour in
The park which is half an
Hour more than you really
Need. From the park. It all
Adds up. To another day.
No cause for any concern.
Manana is here already.

on this day

We are provided with the Rumsfeldian notion of 'asymmetric warfare'. There are many ways of interpreting this phrase.

on reading proust

+++

When I was abroad I could down whole pints of Proust, in one go, session by session.
Now that I’m back, I can’t even take a sip.

+++

curzon study (courtesy of mr evans)

median

Um, yes, well, they tell me (my mother tells me) that there was thunder and lightning to greet me in the darkness of my small hours arrival. (Perhaps this irregular hour prompted my subsequent insomnia). The storm broke and I arrived in its wake. The preponderance of sixes in my numerology, the devilish permutations, were not, perhaps, a good sign. In the Chinese lexicon, children born in that year should have been placed on hillsides and left for the beasts, for if they lived they would cause trouble.

That was forty years ago. Time enough for me to have screamed for England as some child might do in less than a month's time. (It's still possible). Nearly forty years ago. A few hours short.

I wrote in the Dancer (mutant butoh) about life expectancy. In other epochs, countries, climactic ages, I would be an old man by now, having weathered all that the gods had to throw at me.

In this one, I am still within touching distance of youth. (The minute beckons as I write). Rather than feeling like it's all done and dusted, I still feel as though there's a galaxy of items awaiting attention. (It manifests itself).

Ho hum.
Bring it on (and other such positivistic phraseology.)

The second half.
The next definable chunk.

See what this one has to offer.

censored skiathos journal (part 7)

+++

The wind’s up outside and it’s clouded over a little. Which, after this morning’s heat, is a relief. The clouds were very beautiful on the beach just now. Low, a duck’s egg blue, hanging just above the sea like a god-child’s scrawl. I saw a turning woman in there who might have been a jaguar. Was thankful not to be able to decipher any more of the script. Or be looking at it on drugs.

+++

Walked down to the beach after eating. First time I’ve been to the beach by evening. I don’t know why that should be. Normally I like beaches by night. I liked it tonight. At one point a small creature whistled along the shoreline. I thought it might be a rat (too dark to see anything but a blur of movement), but then it didn’t behave in a v ratlike fashion, it sort of stuck around, and a wave broke over it and it didn’t seem bothered, it just scuttled around. Then I thought it might have been a crab, but don’t know, seemed to move too fast for a crab. A mystery, all in all.

+++

Oh and writer –
What?
The greatest power in the world (little pause) – is love.
Thanks Paris.
Door shuts

Last words of Paris to me, just now, water engineer. A man I could get on with, not least because he had ‘Fuck off Paris’ finger-scrawled in the dust of his rear windscreen, noticed as he drove off.

He picked me up 15 minutes ago, turning what would have been an hour and so on’s walk into a ten minute drive. During which he told me about Thessaloniki, the North-South divide in Greece, the beauty of Crete (pronounced Cre-te, so much better), with it’s wildflowers and snow capped mountains, the negative impact of Mammon on the citizens of the South; and why I need to learn Greek, the fount of all language. Paradox, I said. Para-noia, he retorted, and I like him a lot for it.

Fuck me it picked me up, talking to someone normal. The handle for his windscreen fell of and he said he thought there was something wrong with it. Not at all I replied. He didn’t speak much English but he made an effort.

For today, has been… More thinking. When I get back they’ll say how was it and I’ll say you ever not had a conversation with anyone beside yourself for a fortnight? Not quite accurate but you get the jist.

censored skiathos journal (part 6)

+++

I go to the shop to get some bread, which there’s none of, and as I’m walking away, bearing just a bottle of water, a man walks past and kind of double takes, then he stops and says: ‘Hello, I know you very well, you come to Skiathos many times, no?’ and I blink and look at him, he’s normal looking, blue shirt, Greek, short hair, sunglasses, jeans, and I say ‘I don’t think so’, but he’s so convinced he says, ‘You have brother then, I know I see you many times here before’ and he doesn’t want anything from or need anything from me, but I tell him, ‘No. sorry, not me’, and he calls to the supermarket owner, a dry, friendly man and says in Greek something like (I assume) ‘You’ve seen him before haven’t you’ and the supermarket man nods, and I say again, I don’t think so, and the man says well ‘In that case you have a brother or something,’ and gives a slightly knowing laugh and I walk off waving over my shoulder.


+++

I cooked and ate. Tuna from a can. Aubergine. Rice. Yoghurt. It was nothing to get excited about.

This is the process – feel ok, read, eat, then some lumbering dark shadowed thought ambles by, saying, good evening, hate to disturb you, but – And then you are disturbed.

You can see no way out of the mismaze, none at all, forever and ever.

You are full of a tacit anger, or sadness, or fear.

Then the cloud goes on, slips off the radar, you get back to whatever…

+++

Finished the Rainbow. This afternoon on the beach. I waited for the bus for an age in a bid to go back South, but the bus never came so went to the local Paraskevi beach instead.

It is quite a cruel act of an author to let his lead character just elide away over the last sixty pages. Melt into nothingness. His fate unrecorded. So be it. It is quite a cruel conception to plant a manboy in the belly of a rocket and fire him out into space.

Maybe it’s compounded by my state of mind (Well, no, really…) but it also seems a lonesome book at the end, all those pages and people and they’re mostly just thrown back on themselves. Fending for themselves in the Zone. Ring any bells there? Searching for the transcendent which may be revealed… in their futures, missing clues, finding clues, but in the end, holding no one’s hand, staring out of the Imipolex shroud all by themselves. And the author doing the same thing to you, dear reader, no matter how familiar he may seem. Work it out for yourselves. He not going to make it easy for you.

It’s fair enough. I have taken a lot out of living in its pages this last week or so (is it a week). It has given me much, none more so than revealing the borders of ignorance. I noted, with great pleasure, this morning, Marcel turning up in the closing pages. Thought that when I read the book 20 years ago I might not have spotted him, nor perhaps, Red Malcolm, certainly, unquestionably, not the Rioplatensa Spanish, the sad inflexion of a complex geography. Wouldn’t even have suspected there’d be any reason for me to know, ten years or so later, that it was all bona fide, too true, sir, too true for words (it’s all in the tone). The tone. So maybe that’s a reason to carry on living. So that you can come back to the Rainbow every twenty years and see the things you missed the last time. Which gives me perhaps two more readings of it. Perhaps less.

censored skiathos journal (part 5)

+++

10.10pm. Another Skiathos day almost done. Filled with all the prerequisite Skiathos eventualities.

Worked and read until two thirty. Then set off on what was supposed to be not too long a walk, to a beach on the pretty side of the island.

The walk was another epic. After having gone past a dead snake in the road, an enormous thing, which reeked of the concept ‘omen’, I turned West after about forty five minutes, thinking I was at least half way there. Nowhere near. The road was completely deserted – was passed by two cars and one moped in over an hour’s walking, not a sign of a walker (they’ve all gone home). It wound and twirled through the hills like a drum major’s stick. Not a stitch of shade to be had for most of the way there. There was one point when I could actually see the sea, and felt I might be no more than twenty minutes away, when the road backknifed on itself, and took me the best part of half an hour inland, after which I came to a point exactly the same distance from the sea as I had been before, just two hundred metres the other side of a ravine.

It was gruelling. I didn’t enjoy it. The walking catching up with me. I felt like I was in the Sertao, hot, red mud roads, scrub, no trees to speak of, just boiled valleys, full of snakes and prickles.

+++

I notice a few tanned spots on my forehead, like freckles, vestiges of pigment. (I have been sitting here working on Truck, and in front of the desk is a large mirror). I peer at these spots. I didn’t notice them before. I thought my forehead was by now a white slate. In which case – are these spots really vestiges? Or are they new? Because somehow you anticipate that one day, the body will retro-spect, rewind the process, and just as randomly as it appeared to disappear, the original pigment will seep back in, year by year, until one day, you’ll just have glymphs of white, and you’ll say – you see those? That’s the colour I used to be.

+++

censored skiathos journal (part 4)

+++

There is a raging storm outside. I just went for a walk hoping to be able to get to some high ground to take it in the better. Just as well it seemed too far away, as the rain is now coming down, in the space of a couple of minutes, in torrents. A proper medieval Mediterranean panjandrum of a storm. The windows rattle, the sky cries wrack and wreaks havoc, the hills are turned to negative for a flash of a second, like some hideous stripping of veils. Initially it’s stupendous, but as it closes in around you, as the relentless bombs of lightning strike, you realise that there’s something fickle, unkind, vicious, in its make-up. Looks fine from a distance, but find yourself out in the middle of dat holy shit and you is going to feel sorry before you feel better.

Nevertheless, good for the plants.

+++

It was overcast this morning, and I woke early – 8am, having finally slept properly – no insomnia last night, asleep soon after midnight. So I decided to maximise the walking weather. I set off for Kastro (hard to resist) at the Northernmost tip of the island, apparently the ‘capital’ until the mid nineteenth century or so, the site best protected from marauding pirates.

The walk there took two and a half hours, I think. It was a trek, indeed, up and down hills. I’m glad I chose today for it. At the top of one of the hills I was briefly almost chilly in my T-shirt, the sky still clearing after the storm. Kastro itself is an interesting space, a bit of a Tintagel-Upon-Med. Most of it is ruined, the only buildings left being several chapels, where I lit more candles. On the plan, it showed where the wall surrounding the community would have been, and also pointed out the site of a mosque, which seemed interesting, though I couldn’t find any trace of it now. It was also interesting to see ruins of walls and houses, of which there are far more, not just in Kastro itself but along the track leading to it. There’s very little sense of the past on this island, (not that it is too monstrously stuck in the present or the near future). Seeing the scrabby ruins, you suspected that there must be secret, hidden spots in the wilds, somewhere, which still mean something to the locals, which have meant things for centuries.

censored skiathos journal (part 3)

+++

The south is softer – pine trees and sand, and a remarkable shortage of steep hills. The first beach I hit was again beautiful, though, for once, not quite deserted. Swam and sat under a thatched umbrella thing and read. However, it all seemed a bit too easy after the last couple of days, so headed off in search of another.

A car pulled over and asked me if I was lost. I wasn’t but accepted the lift, when the man said the beach I was headed for was his beach. His name was Georg (I think). He didn’t speak much English and me no Greek, so… I went down to his beach and it was empty, save for the beach bar which will not open for ten days. It was a beautiful beach, nice to swim in, sandy, little fishes. I went and sat on a rock to dry off, risking the evening sun on my back. Georg hollered across from the other side, where his beach bar is – Anthony, Is all yours! I hollered back at him. It was one of the best moments of the holiday. I went over and had a word with him before I left. He had a job to do, cleaning up after Winter. The island is only just getting into its stride, and I fear the best bars, the most ramshackle, will not open until I have left.

From there I walked round to another beach, famous for its sunset. Sat and had a beer and some vine leaves, which didn’t taste too good. This was the most developed beach I’d been to – still very low key, but the English in close proximity. (And a moustachioed man who spoke Greek talking about the origins of Jesus to his girlfriend/ wife). I didn’t stay too long, and then walked across my fourth beach, the famous one, Koukinaros, or some’at, which was the first I’ve seen that charged for beach loungers, and had a vast yacht anchored offshore.

The caught the bus back. As I say, a less satisfactory day. First loneliness vibes, that kind of slight sense of restlessness, not feeling anchored in your self.

+++

Tonight I feel tired. For no very good reason, so far as I can tell. It has been probably the lightest day of the holiday.

I have just got back from Skiathos. Were I met a Croatian footballer called Pinto. Who was working as a greeter for his friend’s restaurant. So he claimed. We had quite a long chat. Pinto’s worked as a footballer in Thailand and Singapore. He’s visited Australia, Brazil (Santos, an odd port of call), working in Spain. His family live in Vienna, where immigrants are not well treated. I said the Austrians were notoriously right wing, but then the Croatians are too, and he didn’t seem to bothered. He said he loved Croatia and Bosnia. He was playing football in the Spanish second division, for Las Palmas, when he broke his leg. He’s still convalescing after being in plaster for weeks on end. I asked him why he was doing this job, and he said he liked doing things, he was helping out his friend. I left to catch the bus back (Jus like London town).

That was after eating my first decent meal, at a restaurant overlooking Skiathos Town. The restaurant had about six staff and wasn’t doing great business, but walking around Skiathos, you can see the place gearing up for Summer, signs being painted, bars constructed, renovation finalised. I took some photos.

Also visited the house of the writer Papadimientes. Pretty little modest place, a sofa bed in every room, decent fireplace, homely. The translated novel was too expensive to buy, but anyway, paid my respects. He had a decent beard, looked like what writers used to look like.

censored skiathos journal (part 2)

+++

There are more walkers. Of which more anon.

Woke around 10.30 today. Getting better. Lay in bed for a while and was half tempted to stay there all day, but cajoled myself up and went to get some fresh bread, which is a fair ritual for the morning. The supermarket owner is quite laconic. (Everyone speaks English here). I has asked if he was open on Sundays and he told me: We have long holiday in Winter. We work hard now.

I wanted to get round to the other side of the island, which I’d seen on Saturday on my walk but hadn’t been able to access. Had more luck this time. Walked down the coast road, then took an interior road headed for a monastery. It was a steep hour’s walk away. Pretty green wooded hills. Sweet smelling. I got to the monastery covered in sweat. Climbed some stairs and admired a chapel smothered in Christs, with a small domed, painted roof. The woman there gave me a candle to light. It reminded me of the plural one lighting candles for me in churches years ago. I headed on without much more ado, feeling guilty for not leaving some euros (I am watchfully mean at the moment – it will pass, I know, once I know I am getting into surplus.)

+++

Getting up is the hardest part of the day. I wake up and lie there, wondering what the point is. This morning it was ten, so I’m gaining half an hour per day.

Finally I do move, and then it’s OK. I have my tasks for the day and I proceed.

The tabby cat is playing with some kind of insect on the veranda. Cats are sadists. Sin dudas.

Finished writing about one. Then the Bulgarian cleaning lady turned up. Didn’t have much joy communicating with her.

Headed off on the bus to Skiathos, which is surprisingly pretty. One night I will go and eat a proper meal there, probably still alone, given the way things are looking. Not many putative friends around, even though am being sociable and talking to elderly/ late-middle-aged couples affably. I did a brief tour of Skiathos, but decided to save full inspection for later. Resisted any non-existent temptation to check my emails and headed off in search of another monastery.

This entailed a very steep walk. I got to a church after about an hour a half’s walking and assumed this was it, stopped and read Proust for half an hour feeling pleased with my accomplishment, then realised the road hadn’t actually ended, as the map suggested it should (got given a map this morning). So kept on going another 15 minutes and made it to monastery, which was quite impressive, good dining room, pretty church, with a monk in it, nice spot to be a monk…

On the way back decided to detour via a sign posted beach. The way to this beach was remarkable. The road turned into a track. The track turned into a path. The path turned into a vertical obstacle course. The final section was so harum scarum that I nearly fell twice, a track as narrow as your knee, through gorse, and scrub and knobbly trees (the landscape at the top of the island is quite Cornish, little stymied trees, which have faced down the wind. The climate, of course, is not too Cornish, certainly not for May.)

The track was intimidating, but the beach at the bottom was spectacular. Like yesterday’s deserted, and understandably so, as most of the tourists on this island would have to be airlifted off if they attempted to get down to it. A long, shingly stretch of beach, with, (again) transparent water, which was slightly warmer than yesterdays. I found a perfectly carved seat to read in for a while, swam again, unable to quite believe I’d been given such a perfect beach all to myself. Even risked the sun on my back a bit, it was too beautiful not to, and by now it was getting on for six thirty.

I am aiming to have a beach to myself every day, even though this seems unlikely.

censored skiathos journal (part 1)

Arrived here about 7pm local time. My bag came off the carousel first up, something that’s never happened before. I went out and was directed onto a bus. Sat on the bus for 45 minutes. When it was time for the bus to leave, the battery was flat. We all got off the bus and they push started it. The bus ticked over. Everyone got back on. The bus cut out. We got on another bus. It was gone 9 by the time we reached the hotel.

+++

Bought myself some bread for breakfast and washing up liquid and jam and tea.

Then went for a walk up the hill behind this particular bit of the island, whose name I still do not know. From the top of the hill, about an hour’s climb, I saw Skiathos Town, but chose not to venture down. Got a bit lost at the top of the hill, following a trail which became a bit meadowy then disintegrated into low scrub. I could see a road I wanted to connect to, but came to the conclusion that short cuts might be in short supply here. Apparently there are interesting things on the other side of the island, which will involve some hard walking, which will keep me occupied.

Also started reading Proust, after deliberation. (Proust versus Pynchon). Think he will keep me entertained. Paused to go down to the beach for a swim in the sea. It is very beautiful here. It reminds me of Isla de Miel – an island surrounded by other misty islands which rise out of the sea like witnesses. The water is clear and fresh. The beach none too crowded. A bit disappointed that everyone here seems to be English – have heard no German or Spanish or French being spoken, as you might have expected. The majority of fellow holidaymakers appear to be elderly couples or young families. Have spotted one middle aged gay couple, something of a relief to see something disturbing the nuclear norm. On my walk I passed not a single other walker. I remembered in Bolivia, Isla de Sol, when I went on the cross island trek with Rafa and the two Spanish girls, and we were but a part of a chain of walkers. I guess if you’ve made it to Bolivia you are possessed of a more energetic disposition. We shall see. Firstly if I sustain my walking, and secondly if I come across others on my travels.

+++

‘The Englishman’s sense of logic, so admirable in finance and in everything associated with an art that brings in money at the end of each week, becomes confused and loses its thread as soon as you rise to somewhat more abstract subjects that don’t directly bring in any money.’

Stendahl, Memoires of an Egotist

character assassination

They assiduously yet randomly applied the knowledge they'd been developing.
Their experiments revealed:
There's more than one way to kill a cat.